Jungle Journal Archives - Page 5 of 8

A beautiful lotus growing in our pool

Currently more of a pond…

Jungle Journal

Dusty distractions

September 27, 2019September 27, 2019
by Beave

DIt has been said that I am nothing if I am not generous with my time. The much loved Cerveceria which is our only purveyor of pints for some distance is shutting for the season. There is beer left that it would be unwise and rude to leave in the kegs. My presence is requested to help solve this issue. It took a lot of effort and an entire night of drinking, gambling and dancing to achieve this. Our host is grateful for our efforts. We lock the door and contemplate with some sadness the loss of our “pub” and the pint free months ahead

Can never see the Ceveceria logo the same again.

There is a chink of hope that we can persuade someone to feed us and supply cold beers for the Summer season. It’s a mission as the heat is crippling, staff are hard to find and there are very few tourist dollars. It is considered wise for ones sanity to take a few months off before the season kicks in again non-stop for 8 months. For these entirely reasonable reasons August, September and October are dormant months here with very few places open. There are a handful of fine traditional places serving locals with proper Mexican delights but nothing much in terms of bars. The concept of a pub which gives the community a place to meet and talk nonsense is not so much a thing here.

There is a special bar on the beach in Lo De Marcos which is 8 miles north of us. It offers good food and a large number of yellow fizzy cold beers. The crew are fabulous and the location is outstanding. The sea is calm, tempting and yards from the bar. There is the added bonus of an onshore breeze that cools you down beautifully if you stay very still on your strategically placed bar stool. It’s worth the trouble to make the journey North. If we keep turning up they are more likely to stay open.

On one such day I am floating in the sea slightly disappointed that the temperature of the water appears warmer than the air. The large grey Pelicans fly a few feet above our heads occasionally diving close by scattering fish that collide with us in their rush to escape. I head for the shore dragging my feet through the sand. The lure of a cold yellow fizzy beer and a breeze to sit in is just too much. I’m a few yards from the beach when something hits me. Not in a good way. It feels like I have had a hot nail hammered into my foot. On further examination, it becomes apparent that I have been stung by a Manta Ray. There has been some rain which attracts them to shallow waters. One of them was irritated by being disturbed and stuck his stingy bit deep into me leaving an impressive hole.

My attempts to be a big brave boy are hampered by the blistering eye watering pain which does not get any better, even after a prescribed tequila and a few cold yellow fizzy beers. A very lovely and suitably concerned local girl tells us where there is a patch of plants near the shoreline with distinctive large green leaves. Our Australian is dispatched to collect some. They are then steeped in hot water. My foot is placed in a bowl of this slightly stinky green leaf tea. To my great relief the pain dissipates very quickly. I’m good as gold within minutes. We ask our wise new friend what the leaves are called for future reference. They are a traditional native medicine she tells us. The local name for them is Curamantaray ….. of course.

My attacker. Perhaps not entirely to scale.

Incredibly our jungle jeep is at the stage where our good mechanic is eventually happy to allow me to drive it. I only have a few days before I’m heading North so I arrange to collect the beast and test drive her for a day or two and return it for any required modifications while I am away. It’s looking pretty and immediately attracts a considerable amount of attention. There is no roll bar yet and no seat belts so I take it very easy. I get almost 10 miles before it splutters and cuts out. I am very lucky and manage to glide the thing off the highway onto a rare bit of side road. I would have had nowhere to go and been totally buggered (on one of the most dangerous roads I know) if it had cut out anywhere in the previous 3 miles.

There is much fiddling with leads and battery as I bake in the hard sun. My first mistake was not to have a hat, sun screen or sun glasses in a vehicle with no roof. Lesson learnt. The gods are with me today as I loaded a can of petrol. The petrol gauge is showing a quarter tank but I am suspicious. Sure, enough after a refill she starts up like a champion and I’m on my way to the nearby Pemex for a fill up. Second lesson learnt.

The “Spanker” at Tomatina Bar & Restaurant

I make it to the beach at Lo De Marcos and grab a drink at our new local. The beast looks the part but needs some work. There are a few too many rattles and driving it at any speed does make one feel somewhat vulnerable. It’s when I steer off the highway that things become interesting. The spring suspension has had the benefit of some hydraulic additions which have made the ride noticeably solid. The journey to La Colina is very slow and eventful. It’s a tadge bumpy. I can describe every rock and divot by feel. My bum-bone appears to be hitting the top of my head. I park near the pool and get out slowly. I’m walking funny. My spine is knotted and my arse feels bruised and sore. This thing could be the end of me. Slowly spanked to death. Modifications are indeed required.

The time has come. I’m on my way out of my hot wet jungle to hot arid Reno to prepare all the many things required to allow us to survive in the dust of the Black Rock Desert for the coming weeks ahead. My lists of things to do in the next week are long and terrifying. I am meeting Jayne in 4 days. We intend to be leaving the delights of Reno almost immediately afterwards to collect our junk filled trailer which we haven’t seen in two years and then live in it for a number of weeks in an impressively inhospitable environment. No pressure.

The Growler : Our janky old trailer stored at Pyramid Lake .

The Black Rock Desert is a thousand square miles and sits at 4000 feet. The playa is a lake for many months of the year but when the heat starts to get very silly it dries up to a salt flat. This is one of the few places where land speed records are attempted as it is so level and featureless. It’s tough to avoid the effects of altitude and severe dehydration on the body as the salt in the air draws moisture away from the skin and breath. I don’t sweat out there. It’s zero humidity. That said the temperatures often reach well over 100ºF during the day and can dip below freezing once the sun sets. Dust storms are a normal occurrence, and in whiteout conditions, winds often reach around 70mph. There are few living things out there on the playa. No birds in the sky, no plant life to speak of and if there are some poor unfortunate bugs or creatures found they are usually imported from visiting vehicles or reluctantly blown in on the wind. .

All the temperature and non of the humidity

For reasons best left to myth and mystery this is the chosen venue for the Burning Man event. A temporary commerce free city is created for a population of around 70 000 for one week. Money is not a thing in Black Rock City as the only things you can buy are ice at two places and in one location coffee. It’s a gift economy. Bring everything you need and give away what you can . It’s the 4^th biggest city in Nevada for one week of the year and attracts a stunning concentration of art alongside extraordinarily diverse creativity. After the event participants are required to take everything they brought with them back with them. When the legendary playa restoration teams are finished there is no sign that anyone was there. A true “leave no trace” event.

This is the 13^th time I have been involved with Burning Man in Nevada. My “burn-mitzvah”. This is a clear indicator that the event still holds enough of an attraction to me that I am prepared to invest the considerable amounts of time, resources and gut lining required to be there. It is an environment that tests and refines ones physical & mental stamina. Why I chose to put myself through this is a long story. Years of unique experiences are hard to summarise. How does one explain the unexplainable? I will, however, try and give you a flavour of what captured me in the first place and inspired me enough to keep at it. The photos show art pieces from this year.

I first heard about Burning Man around a campfire at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset UK in 2004. Glastonbury is the largest greenfield music and arts festival in the world. I have been there 27 times so it perhaps suggests I’m a festival junkie of some kind. That year my kids won an O’Neill competition to allow them to surf with pro-surfers in Cornwall the same week as the festival. I was committed to go but I wasn’t going to miss a surf with pros. I arranged to hitch out of the event early morning, join my family on an idyllic Cornish beach and then hitch straight back again.

Later that night I sat in a yurt sauna with my mates discussing highlights of the week. Muse, Oasis, James Brown, Joss Stone, Toots and the Maytals, Franz Ferdinand, Scissor Sisters, Black Eyed Peas and Sister Sledge were memorable enough but for me didn’t beat our day catching clean waves. This woke me up to make a pact with myself to open up to broader experiences rather than being a habitual Glastonbury junkie. Two guys had joined us and heard me babbling on. They agreed , suggested I do things differently and try out Burning Man. It sounded interesting enough but at that time I suspected that it was something I would never do.

The *Head Maze* houses 18 extraordinarily connected art rooms
Artist: Matthew Schultz

The very next year I found myself at Glastonbury again but soon after I took a surf trip in California. The water was cold, the waves sparse and the attitude of my fellow paddlers was aloof and exclusive. Not what I imagined. At my hostel, I received an entirely unexpected and random call from Reno Nevada. A complete stranger called Fred had heard about me from someone I had briefly met the week before in a bar in San Diego. Fred had somehow decided that I was to come to Burning Man. I needed to get to Reno and he would sort out the rest. I remember after the call being marginally more intrigued than confused. Of course, I was going.

Our friend and neighbour in Mexico and his unbelievable art car
*El Pulpo Mecanico* Artist : Duane Flatmo
Photo Credit : Stephane Lanoux

I managed to get to Reno and turned up at what I discovered was The Black Rock International Burner Hostel. A retired teacher from Reno who dedicated his time, his house and his pension to encourage and facilitate people from all over the world to come to Burning Man. I was one of them. After some quick pre-training, finding a bike, a tent, a box of trail bars and as much Gatorade and PBR (Pabs Blue Ribbon) as I could carry I found myself in a car with two girls from Montreal and my new Turkish friend heading out to whatever this thing was. About 4 hours later we arrive on the playa. It’s a few days before the event and the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. The stars were stunning and hypnotic.

I stood next to the car getting checked through a traffic gate with nothing else visible. My eyes were slowly becoming accustomed and caught something moving in the dark. I stared for a long time as the shape of a man running towards me took shape. As he got closer it became apparent that he was a big bloke, hairy, wearing a Viking helmet and absolutely nothing else. His eyes were locked on mine. He was coming at me at some pace and in the process of going for a high five/hug he knocks me to the ground. His face is very close to mine, his eyes wild and wide. He holds my head in his hands and slowly and clearly says to me … if this don’t change your life boy don’t come back…. He then gets up and runs on. I never saw him again.

*“Slonik”* is 23M of elephant that arrived from Moscow
Artist : Michael Tsaturyan

Within a few hours of arriving in the dark I am throwing ropes over structures and bikes on tents as a series of storms hit. I absolutely thought Burning Man was a survival exercise in keeping beer (PBR) cold while not being blown away in a dust storm. That’s certainly a part of it but it was two days later when I woke up in a stinking hot tent that I managed to see further than a few yards away.

I took a walk with one of the Canadian girls and finally understood the scale of where I was. Our little storm blown camp of mainly Kiwis, Brits, Irish and Ozzies was but a tiny part. We walked to an elaborate temple structure. We sat and took stock of the beauty of the building and the overwhelming vastness of the place in which we found ourselves. An older man with a white beard came and sat next to us. He asked us to look into ourselves and find something that would make our hearts sing and ask for it .. out loud. Mine was easy. My surf trip hadn’t really materialised well and I wanted to surf. “Good luck with that” he said…” but you never know.. this place may just surprise you. “

One of my favourite pieces this year made up of slivers of perfectly stacked plywood.
*Mariposita* Artist: Chris Carnabuci

We slowly walked towards where we thought our camp might be. We were lost pretty soon after leaving but lost was a good place to be. We saw it coming from a long way away. An immense wall of dust covering the entire sky to what we guessed was the South. We were armed with already well used scarfs and goggles. When it hit us we could see nothing, we held hands so we didn’t lose each other. The wind was strong but we kept walking very slowly. After a few minutes, a shape emerged and we found a guy on a tricycle who handed us cold PBR . We sat together in that spot in the dust storm until the beers ran out. The air cleared and we noticed the trike was towing a small trailer. On the trailer was a long board on springs. Our new dust storm friend was riding around offering to tow people on a surfboard! We both got to surf the playa gobsmacked.

When you cover 100 steel statues in wax and chuck in a match
*The Mans Army* Artist: Michael Ciulla & The Rave Knights

It would take me a full dissertation to continue this story. Maybe I’ll write it one day but it’s not for now. These first few days at Burning Man truly captured my imagination and led me into a world of endless possibilities. I did listen to my naked viking friends words and have now returned a dozen more times. The very many other strange, humble, skilled, inclusive and magnificent folks I met in 2005 and since have been responsible for seeming constant further adventures. We have, together, created amazing projects large & small in all corners of the world and helped hundreds of curious travellers to experience what would have otherwise have passed them by. For this I am grateful beyond measure.

When a bunch of black powder meets an anvil
Photo credit : John Curley

This year Jayne & I somehow have become staff at the event and have been persuaded to build a media centre and deck, then take it down again and store it in a container. It was hard work but a relatively straight forward project with a good crew which turns out to be fun & drama free. I did manage somehow to stupidly throw a lump of wood through the back window of the truck I was borrowing but I was forgiven. Eventually.

The 38 foot long *Flux Capacitor* Artist: Henry Chang
We were gifted this art car to play with for a fabulous few days and nights.

We camp in our janky trailer next to far better organised friends who are building a very large-scale metal hand that blows propane from fingers that are articulated so they form different hand signals. There was a moment when I was inside the metal forearm during a deafening pyrotechnic show using pulleys to move giant fingers. During a very hot afternoon we had to task of diverting the Bunny March (a herd of hundreds of over excited lunatics dressed as rabbits) away from our crew loading a truck of highly explosive fireworks. Not something that happens to a chap every day.

*I.L.Y* Artist: Dan Mountain and his sexy rock star crew

Of all the many unique moments in 2019 there was one that will stay with me. I visited the Temple this year to leave a message for my Dad. The process of leaving messages and tributes that will burn and be released is one that is a tradition here and in my experience very helpful to very many. . This year the structure was a series of portals in Japanese style. The inside is covered with photos of people who have died along with thousands of messages of love, hope and forgiveness. . I find a bench that has some space left on it and leave my Dad a message. I take along a few slugs of decent single malt Scotch. I take a drink in his honour and pour the rest on the message and leave the bottle for him. It’s emotional as hell but cathartic. I apologise to him that I couldn’t get the 10-year-old Laphroaig Cask Condition Scotch that we always drink together but under the circumstances I’m sure he won’t mind.

The attention to detail on this piece was stunning. Carpentry porn on every wall with dioramas hidden behind pictures . The Folly represents an imaginary shantytown of funky climbable towers and old western storefronts, cobbled together from salvaged and reclaimed lumber.
The Folly Artist: Dave Keane & his epic crew of warriors

A truly gorgeous burn.
Photo Credit: John Curley

We then head off for a treat we have waited for a whole week for. A shower. There is an area called the Wet Spot where hot showers are available for staff. We were given a couple of passes and have saved them for this moment. A shower after a week in the dust is transformative in so many ways. 15 minutes of water has shifted all the muck and for a short time restores the feeling of not being stuck to your pants.

I am lying in the sun drying off when the girl next to me says my name. She recognises me from an event in Wales some years ago and knows many of my mates. We offer her a lift back to her camp in our truck. She is a volunteer doctor from UK who is not licensed to work in Nevada so has been learning to repair bicycles at a free repair shop. She is also an active whisky club aficionado. When she gets back to her camp she appears with a Viking horn and a sample. It’s a full bottle of 10-year-old Laphroaig Cask Conditioned ……..

*The Temple of Direction* flames creating a fire dragon.
Artist :Geordie Van Der Bosch & Temple Crew

Some days after everything has officially finished and all the propane has been burned off we leave a large crew of hard core lunatics restoring the playa to its former unremarkable glory. We store the trailer and make it back to Reno. We have three baths and three showers back to back. We try and find out how many of the hotel towels we can wreck. Jayne takes her flight back to Toronto. I stay on for a day or two to mend the truck window and fill myself with sushi and steaks. It takes a number of zombie days in a Reno Casino to recover enough to fly home.

I’m glad to be in the jungle again. My buddies have looked after the place (and the cats) and everyone has survived. Jayne is expected to be home and in loin cloths again as soon as November so that’s something to look forward to.

I’m back just a few days and my body has entirely changed shape again. I was feeling skinny there for a moment but like a ginger pot noodle have swollen to an acceptable size again by just adding water.

I’m writing this in the treehouse while Hurricane Lorena swings by. It’s a CAT 1 and the eye is off shore so thankfully we are getting no winds to deal with but it’s been raining hard now for a large number of hours. It’s so good to be damp again.

Jungle Journal

Change is in our nature

August 5, 2019August 5, 2019
by Beave

My ability to capture our lives in this blog has been somewhat scuttled due to a number of reasonable excuses of late so there is a bit of catching up to do. First and foremost, not having a laptop has been a fairly demotivating factor. My newly purchased tablet has been bloody useful and reconnected me with the wider world but is a compete pain in the bum to type on. The frustration of insanely programmed predictive text and a randomly functional narky touch screen rather than a key board has been frankly too annoying to face.

The days after we were burgled were very strange. There was gratitude for what we had left and acceptance of what we had lost. The process of gathering police reports and evidence for the insurance company is never a joyous process but the Mexican way beggars’ belief. Convoluted requests for notional paperwork mixed with conflicting advice of how to get them combined with almost fictional bureaucratic madness combine to send the sanest of us completely bonkers.

This tarot card was the first thing we picked up from the pile of random mess we found in the treehouse after the robbery.

At one point, we are asked to return to the police station 10 miles away to request that all the paperwork they gave us is reprinted and stamped with an official stamp. The admin girl there is stern and officious but Jayne has melted her stony heart and they get along fine. The paper work is redone and stamped and we are presented with a bill that must be paid and certified. It’s a total of 30 pesos. Less than 2$US. We happily try to pay the girl but police stations are not allowed to take cash. In order to achieve what we need we are instructed to drive to the official payment office and return with the receipt to be authorized. The payment office is 50 miles away. That’s a 100-mile round trip to pay 2US$. We look at each other in disbelief. Even Madame Admins expressionless face cracks a little as we ask her to explain this to us a few more times very slowly as we frankly don’t believe it. As it happens her love for Jayne manifests in a dodgy side deal that makes the process easier but we did indeed have to travel 50 miles to pay for the photocopying.

I will be kind and save you the many further tales of extraordinary pedantic police administration we witnessed and endured. I am happy to report that some weeks later we have been paid for one insurance claim. When someone eventually admits to understanding the system that they are employed to manage and lets us know how they want us to invoice in the correct way we should presumably get paid for the other. Without Jaynes excellent Spanish, our endless patience, perseverance and our thick sweaty pasty skin this would have been impossible. Insurance companies here make themselves safe from any poor unfortunates that may actually need any money from them by constructing seemingly endless levels of increasingly nonsensical administration. Maybe it’s a universal business model. Bastards.

It’s a few days after we get back and we are busy re-sorting our lives and taking stock. We are anticipating the rains arriving soon and it’s already hotter than is absolutely necessary. Not expecting any guests any time soon. We are interested what life will throw at us next. Then we find out. Jayne gets an email from Toronto.

In one of her former lives Jayne has been a significant player in the world of transit. Getting people from one place to the other. The fact that in London anyone can get on a tube, train or bus by waving a credit card at a bleepy box is down to Jayne and her team. The heady days of long sweaty queues juggling change at counters or machines to work out what ticket you may need are no more. Toronto want to move from sweaty queues to bleepy boxes so need Jayne to make it happen. They need her enough to offer a short-ish term contract at very sexy money. So there is a decision to make.

We don’t need the money even though it would change our lives short term. Jayne does not have to leave her beloved jungle home. The cash is the temptress. It would allow us not to be beholden to chasing Airbnb 5-star rating from guests. It would allow us to build more infrastructure, spend more time on our own projects and attract heaps of art. We as a couple have not spent much time apart so that in itself would be a fairly dramatic new dynamic. The contract does offer the potential in the near future to find ourselves in a position where we both live in Mexico and Jayne remote works a few days a month and we would be entirely self-sustainable. That is the real golden goose. It takes a lot of soul searching but it has been decided upon. Jayne has accepted the contract and is required to start in Toronto in about a week.

In what seems no time at all the treehouse is in bits again as everything we own is dragged out and half of it imported into our remaining luggage. Friends offer to lend Jayne all the essentials she is missing for her new temporary city existence. There is quite a lot missing. Silly little things such as clothes and shoes. We have one night out in Puerto Vallarta and then very early Jayne flies out to a posh hotel for a few days while she looks for an apartment to rent and I am left alone in the jungle with the cats. This is a huge change and it has happened so quickly. These last weeks have all been something of a blur.

Our treehouse is a modest 6M x 6M but now there is so much less stuff and only the three of us it seems somewhat larger. The jungle seems to have expanded too. All this space all to myself. It’s been a while since I’ve had this much time for just me. It takes a short while to readjust and settle in. It’s a good few days before I find myself leaving the jungle or talking to anyone. I spend the time digging drainage trenches , building furniture, rearranging my new living space for one and preparing all the many thing for the coming downpours. It’s exhausting and distracting.

Moving myself and stuff around the Jungle is a different prospect now the Razor is elsewhere. Django (our 1982 van) is our only form of transport and is limited to where it can go and at what pace. It currently has 480 000 km on its clock. Life slows down noticeably as a result. When the rains come properly it will need to live in the town as it will get trapped out here. Our jungle buggy is getting a new suspension, seats and wheels so no sign of that for a while yet. Thankfully our stunningly generous friends, currently in the USA for a few months, lend us their jeep. Now jeeps have something of a crap reputation here. There is a romantic image many gringos from the USA have of travelling around the tropics in an open top jeep. To the obvious delight of local mechanics many do just that. Jeeps are their no.1 source of income. Despite its reputation we gratefully accept a solid 4×4 that will get me across my land. Over the week or so I used it I sorta kinda got to like her a tiny little bit. She has stiff suspension and is a bone rattler for sure but it didn’t miss a beat going up and down our hill.

I get a call from town. Our well head turtle sculpture is ready to go. Exciting stuff. The paint required to protect it from rusting away has arrived and applied in funky style. It’s now clearly a male turtle. We load him up on a truck and bring him out. In place, he looks extraordinary. He is named Wel-Ed. The day is getting ridiculously hot but there is work to be done. I prepare the area and mix concrete. A mate turns up out of the blue to deliver life saving ice cream and give me a much-needed hand. We are both soaking wet with sweat and dizzy in the heat but it is done. Wel-Ed is solidly in place and he looks magnificent. Our first commissioned art piece.

The process of getting accommodation in Toronto is proving a touch more challenge than expected. After spending many hours on line reviewing small but luxurious apartments it becomes apparent that many of the adverts are scams. We quickly learn these scams are well known and frequent in Toronto, Vancouver Seattle and many other places. Dodgy buggers armed with much cheek and gab trawl Airbnb sites for pictures of apartments and then re-post them as rentals on Craig’s list and fake websites. They ask for upfront deposits. When renters arrive at their new home they find it already occupied by the actual owner or legitimate renter. We came across a load of them. All pushing hard for deposits up front and reluctant to show you the property. Took a week before Jayne navigated her way around the unscrupulous and moved into a rather posh, if compact and overpriced, apartment not too far away from the office so she can walk to work. Let the temporary nesting begin. Bring on the gin and Tim Bits. Tim Hortons who are the ever-present coffee provider of choice in Canada also offer highly addictive boxes of small round doughnut type balls (Tim Bits) with varying levels of sugar coatings. Canadian crack.

The highway construction has been relatively quiet recently. Environmental groups have been conducting studies to see what the actual effects on the wildlife are manifesting. A group who track Jaguar have been working close by and we meet up. They are tracking about a dozen Jaguar who are all very close. One of them is over 100kg in weight so we are advised to be cautious. They have set up cameras and hung pig guts in the tress to attract them. These photos were taken just a few hundred yards from our house. Jaguar are not interested in humans as food and concentrate their attention on cattle. Their greatest danger are cattle ranchers who shoot them. To prevent this the Mexican government pays farmers a good price for any cattle the Jaguar take. The problem is that the paperwork and administration is also very Mexican and most ranchers can’t or won’t go through the compensation process so continue to shoot them. The conservation teams have jumped in and now take on the administration on the ranchers’ behalf to encourage them to keep the guns away from the Jaguar. This bit of direct smart conservation action is making a measurable difference.

The land is looking good. Drainage ditches are in place and I have stripped all the beds and prepared the place as best I can to cope with the water that is forecast very soon. I have installed tarps over the kitchen and a water repellant coating on the outside walls of the most vulnerable casitas. My dear mate from Lo De Marcos has asked to live on the land for the Summer and help out. More than anything this will allow me time away if needed. I start a plan to visit Toronto for a short while.

I am approached by a local girl who lives in the guts of the town on the main exit road where all the construction traffic passes 24 hours a day. She is looking for a more peaceful place to stay for a few months. She wants to garden and generally keep the place clean and functional during the time when we don’t have guests and do have thunderstorms every night. So that’s two self-sufficient people on our land for the Summer. Result !

An Australian friend of Jakes contacts me. She is in Columbia and heading North and interested if there is a place to stay over the next month or so. There is a ready-made small community developing with the aim of making thing better here. I have agreed for all of them to be here until November. That is the rainy season covered. Be great to have some help and keep the place alive. I am starting to realise this new situation removes my best excuse for not going to Burning Man this year.

Jaynes contract goes up to the end of December. She can leave with 10 days’ notice but potentially she won’t be back till Xmas. She is not the jaded old burner I have become so is very keen to go to Burning Man in Nevada again this year. www.burningman.com We have great friends who have recommended us to an infrastructure build so we have been offered staff passes and the ability to arrive way before the masses. It gives Jayne a much-needed break from city competence in the freedom of the desert. La Colina is now occupied so I have run out of excuses not to join in. My resistance is weak and I crack under the considerable pressure. I’m in and flights to Reno booked. Here we go again.

Dusty Desert Nonsense in Our Future Again

The rains arrive. A huge storm of tropical proportions delivers a vast amount of water in the shortest time through the night. Lightening is close and the thunder rips the sky above the treehouse. It’s been a while since I was in one of these. Spectacular. The morning shows that the water ditches were 80% successful and show what adjustments need making. I check the well. The water is back for now. It’s been a worry as we have had no well water for weeks. The source stream up in the hills that feeds all the dwellings between me and the town stopped flowing for the first time in 40 years the week before. Relief.

The frogs and toads have turned up again. Raucous amphibian orgies keep me awake for another couple of wet nights. The pool has had no water for weeks and is in a sorry state. It’s now home to countless swimming beasties. There are long strings of toad spawn , water beetles and many thousands of tadpoles. There are also masses of horrible looking things that constantly swim vertically from the bottom of the pool to the surface and back again. They are a few inches long, black, a cross between a fat slug and a hairy caterpillar with fins and a large head. They look like something from a bad movie and there are hundreds of them. When there is enough water I’ll restore the pool to the humidity sanctuary that it will become for the Summer. In the meantime it will have to remain a well occupied jungle pond.

So things have rapidly shifted from jungle solitude to a full schedule of travel over the coming weeks. I let it slip that I am flying to Toronto and the word gets through to an animal sanctuary in Sayulita http://sayulitanimals.org . These lovely folk rescue animals in bad situations and get them adopted around the world. There are two puppies that have new owners in Toronto and they are desperately looking for a mule to transport them to their new owners. They bombard me with messages and calls. I am puppy mugged. It looks like that’s going to be me.

So I gather what could be considered relatively normal clothes and an empty suitcase and am collected by the animal sanctuary with two four month old puppies and head to the airport. They are by any standards cute. Even the process of checking in is hampered by adoring crowds. I am to carry these little buggers all the way through Dallas and then onto Toronto. By the time I get onto the first plane and they are squeezed under the seat in front me there is already a small dedicated crowd of puppy followers. If you would like to experience the attention usually saved for the most famous and beautiful people carry a box of puppies through an airport. I’m mobbed. It’s past midnight when I arrive in Toronto and get through the hoops and special inspections to get dogs into Canada. The new owners are waiting with great anticipation but they have to wait for Jayne who is first in the queue to greet me. Two happy new puppy families later we head in a taxi towards the city.

Its already a bit of a head twist, post-puppies, arriving in Toronto centre at night. Our rather posh apartment has a view over the city and the CN Toronto tower. It has automatic blinds, a TV the size of me , a dishwasher , ice maker, heating and air-con . It is also home to a fully automatic toilet with an electronic control panel to allow for a number of bum washing and polishing options. Bit of a change to the usual bucket in a box option. I look out into the city from our posh apartment with a glass of cold chardonnay. It absolutely feels like I have landed in a graphic novel.

More bum cleaning choices than absolutely necessary

So walking to the office with Jayne in the mornings shows that perhaps I’m not entirely city conditioned. The amount of other people is a touch overwhelming . Crowds of them at pedestrian crossings all packing the pavements heading to their offices. No one talking to each other. Half of them dodging joggers, bikes and traffic while staring at a phone. Then at 9 am peace descends on the city. Office folk are in their offices and everyone else is in a Tim Hortons. Shops don’t open till 10 am . It’s altogether a bit strange.

So as Jayne applies her genius at work I am released to Toronto. I spend far too much time in the Apple store and not quite enough time buying tools at Home Depot. We stock up with tech, shoes, clothes and cheese. It’s a very multicultural city with all the benefits to gastronomy that brings. It’s good to catch up and our week is brightened by fresh Pad Thai, home cooked chicken, a quite superb Moroccan lamb , authentic Japanese dishes, Portuguese sardines, dozens of buck-a-shuck oysters and very importantly buckets and buckets of much missed Guinness. We add culture with a trip to an interactive art exhibition and a night at the theatre. It’s all very different. I haven’t been bitten by anything for over a week.

I’m very grateful that Jayne is so well appreciated by her colleagues and that we have the money to enjoy time in what is without a doubt a very expensive place to be. As I drag my over-packed bags back to the airport Im absolutely looking forward to getting home. The luxury of well paid city life is a measure of great success for many. We can certainly appreciate it for a short while but it’s clear our basic human needs are met elsewhere. I am most grateful that we both know that and have our self created sanctuary in which to stay just the right side of sane. Jayne will be back in our world soon enough. It’s not easy to play the game when you know its not the game for you. We just have to change the game.

Arriving back after just over a week away is a shock. The whole place looks entirely different. The dust has changed to dark rich earth. The paths are overgrown with vines and covered in fallen branches. The roads have been washed thin by the flooded rivers that are now showing signs of flowing and are full of rocks after the storms . The pool is now two feet deeper. The tadpoles and black hairy swimmer things twice the size. Since I left there have been real tropical storms. Huge quantities of water and lightening.

The effects are not entirely welcome. A few days before I return the power went out. The solar system is showing fault lights and it’s tropically hot. We don’t have lights , refrigeration or more importantly fans ! I spend the next two days sweating like never before while tracing and repairing potential faults. It’s so hot I can’t think. I find myself sitting on the sharp jungle floor with a breaker box in pieces in front of me. Ants are biting my feet and my head is under constant attack from mosquitos. The heat turns me into an even more obvious moron. My over heated brain feels like its forcing it’s thoughts through warm soup. I spent half my time looking for my screwdriver with my right hand that I eventually discover in my left hand. I have been up at 7 am in order to speak to three separate solar inverter experts around the world who all give me conflicting advice. The latest is to remove the entire 40kg inverter and send it to Mexico City for repair. I can’t face the idea of that unless absolutely necessary . Even my soupy brain tells me they are all talking bollocks. I pass out and wake up a few hours later with an idea. I return to the solar inverter which I have stared at for hours and flick a few switches . Power is restored. I am saved.

It has occurred to me only today that I have one week to get myself ready to fly to Reno. I must not only prepare the land for leaving for the best part of a month but I must entirely prepare myself for burning man too. So I have a week to clean the pool and fix the water pipes , collect and return the jungle jeep, replace security cameras and finish this overdue blog. Then I get to pack enough stuff to leave the humid tropical heat of our jungle and spend a month in a hot dry dusty salty desert. I’m looking forward to be dehydrated in a whole new and exciting way . Lucky me.

Jungle Journal

Endless Possibilities

June 23, 2019June 23, 2019
by Beave

We don’t have a great deal of time to stew on the fact that we have less things. Clearly we need to beef up our security when we are not on the land. We knew this and became complacent but have had the requisite kick up the arse and our focus is restored.

Distractions are numerous. The past few weeks we have had very little sun. This is a blessed relief from a ginger man’s perspective but not such good news for solar batteries. The trees are dispensing large loads of fluff and leaves which act as a fabulous photon barrier and require regular removal. Finding me performing one legged acrobatic ballet moves perched on a ladder while welding a fluff remover on a pole over the solar panels is a common sight these days. Petrol has had to be deployed a few times now to top us up with power. This involves lifting a very heavy generator onto a slope near the batteries and levelling it with rocks and wood. Then a few hours later lifting the thing back into the solar house while balancing on the slope and the janky half rotten wood step we have created to make the process possible if not extremely hazardous. A better solution is required before I end up flattened. More sun for sure.

The rains are teasing us. A couple of nights of solid rain already then nothing. Just this initial downpour has transformed the place. Dust to mud to solid flat ground in a matter of days. The jungle has opened its dry eye and is now fully prepared for a growth spurt. The browns are already greenish. The greens are now vibrant and full of life. Rain preparations are starting but the humidity is upon us and I’m that soggy guy again. Armed with pick axe and shovel I can get through a few meters of trench and a few litres of water in about an hour then I’m done. Recovery time is in hours not minutes. Everyday I’m reminded that I’m not a 26 year old ginger ninja anymore.

Life out here is now more animated as the rains threaten. Butterflys surround us, large lizards & geckos & iguanas are everywhere. Groups of June bugs are crashing into anything that gets in their dozy way and knocking themselves out in small piles. They really are the dumbest thing out here. Our first fireflies have started to flash and glow around the fringes which is always a great indicator that water is in our near future. It’s also frog orgy time again. Riddle me this. Why is it that as the first drops of rain fall onto the arid dry dust landscape there instantly appears hundreds of full size randy frogs and toads in loud voice? Is it like a jungle pot noodle? Just add water and an entire rehydrated toad the size of a coconut is created? I have avoided Googling this phenomena as I’m happy to believe that this is just one of nature’s magic tricks.

Nocturnal ant hoards are making their presence known. Large areas of jungle have been crisscrossed with clear debris free paths where highways of black and red ants have decided to march. There is little that will stop them. Our night was somewhat interrupted recently when we noticed a few of the large black versions on our mosquito net. I leapt out of bed and was presented with a mass of the buggers all over the inside of the windows climbing the wall and heading for the roof. A small hole in the floor was allowing thousands of them to troop up the main house timbers into the house. Not good. There is a white milky toxic substance called Mata Plagas we try to avoid but we put aside for moments like this. The options are to either spray chemical barriers to divert the endless throng of fearless biting ants or be overrun. I spray where they are getting in first which has an immediate effect. The heavy flow of ants stops. There is much naked balancing on furniture so I can reach the roof and attack the army that has been cut off from it’s reinforcements. I’m holding my breath as I don’t want toxic death spray in my lungs. When I’m happy that the house invaders are all dealt with I put on my sandals and walk outside through the shower to investigate further and assess the possibilities of further attack. Through the darkness I can see the whole of the jungle floor is moving. It’s a biblical sight. The shower is full of ants and the back wall of the house is covered. I start the defence by clearing the shower and spraying a thick barrier of toxins around me. It occurs to me pretty early on that despite my efforts I’m getting eaten. My sandaled feet have a large amount of front line attack ants biting into them. I spray myself liberally and put the shower on to soothe the burn. The pain is significant. I get another few volleys of toxin onto the house and retreat. I check the balcony and the front door and all is calm. There are no more ants in the house and the none coming through the shower area. Crisis averted. It takes an hour or so of moaning and swearing and pints of lotion for my feet and legs to stop burning. They are an efficient fighting force. All respect.

As the number of guests here has reduced to a trickle. There is a lot less work to do managing the loos and the compost. Termites have, however, entirely devoured large amounts of the pallets that make up a the compost housings. Choosing how to protect your feet is an important decision on a daily basis. The flip-flop/thong/sandal is, however, the footwear of choice most days because of the heat. Hot and heavy work boots are usually only applied when there is heavy lifting, digging or thick jungle to hack through. The implication of this decision came home to me when I went to assess the process of repairing and replacing the compost retaining walls. I took a leap over a pile of sawdust and found myself unable to move. I was somehow stuck to the floor. You know the gods are smiling on you when you find a very long large and rusty nail has passed through the sole of your shoe and is now protruding from the gap between your toes.

I am for a short while transported back to the black hole of imbecility that is the UK tax system. As all my company and personal records on my laptop and hard drives have been stolen I need to reset accounts and access codes to allow me to run my business in the way the beloved HMRC dictate. Well after an eternity of being on hold on international telephone lines awaiting the next idiot to guide me in entirely the wrong direction I give up. It appears that I’m stuck in a great loop of ignorance. HMRC cannot authenticate my identity without the information that I do not have. I cannot get that information without authentication by HMRC. Only took a few hours of intensely frustrating conversations with under trained pillocks to work this out. I’ll have to be more creative. At least if they want to tax audit me I have absolutely nothing for them to see and a very good excuse why.

We are sorting our lives out one quiet afternoon when the Mexican army arrives. It’s a strange sight to see a troop of Marines in full combats carrying heavy weapons marching up our hill towards the house. They have heard that there have been robberies in the area and they are showing force. They intend to remove undesirables. We manage to convince them that we are actually quite desirable and take their contact details. We now have the phone number of some large well armed Marines. Not a bad thing.

As we settle back into the slow daily routines amongst the peace and beauty of our jungle fate intervenes. Jayne has been contacted by a colleague who is running a project in Toronto and wants her to consider coming up and spending 3 to 6 months working with them. This has created a real conundrum. We have invested a lot of ourselves avoiding commercial nonsense and false prophets. The money would certainly be very useful for investment in more infrastructure here and take the pressure off the often irritating efforts to keep our 5 star Air BnB ratings. I can hold the fort here, get on with some projects and travel North to visit when required. That aside, does Jayne want to put clothes on again? Shoes, pants, even maybe a coat? Swap tacos for cheeseburgers? Does she want to forego the hot sweaty and wet Summer in Nayarit for the temperate conditions of Toronto? It’s a dilemma for sure. Her telephone interview went very well but no offer is in hand yet. The Toronto corporate machine may require someone more permanent and less jungly. We are unsure if she will be offered a contract that she can accept. There is certainly no need for either of us to leave our home here to take on any contracts as we are financially ok for the time being but it’s a good opportunity and a tempting one. Endless possibilities arise again.

Regretfully we hear that a friend of ours has died. Dave Fisher was a great local musician and character. He and Pablo jammed for hours and hit it off like evil twins. He will be missed by all and again puts our recent issues fully in perspective.

Jungle Journal

Jungle Jeep Rescue & a Smack in the Chops.

June 18, 2019June 18, 2019
by Beave

So our fading patience with our totally useless mechanic in Chapala has finally come to an end. It’s taken over 18 months of almost comical excuses, unbelievable lies and vacant promises to get us to this point. We need to arrange an intervention and somehow get our vehicle away from these inept morons. We have a plan.

To get things started we will need to call the equally useless mechanic’s wife to let her know that we will be at her shop to remove our now almost mythical jungle jeep in the next two days. In order to have everything in our name, there is, of course, the inevitable Mexican process. We have the name of a fixer who has agreed to queue up at the vehicle document office in Guadalajara at 5 am the morning after we arrive. He will present all the required documents (currently with the morons in Chapala), pay all unpaid taxes that the morons have agreed to cover and offer proof of identity by presenting our very precious Temporary Resident card. This card has taken us well over a year of painful trips to immigration offices to get hold of and we are wholly nervous that it will be leaving our sight in the hands of an unknown bloke who appears drunk whenever we try and message him.

There are few other options. This is what is required if we want our sexy wheels back. There are a number of things that must happen. We MUST somehow make sure the morons do what they have agreed to do for the first time ever. They MUST deliver all the paperwork to fixer-man by end of the day tomorrow or we are stuffed. We MUST drive to meet drunk fixer-man in Guadalajara and hand over our ID card. We also MUST find ourselves a trailer or dolly to add to our van so we can tow the thing back. Despite endless assurances that the jungle jeep is mechanically sound we have absolutely zero confidence that it will be drivable with any semblance of safety. We have reviewed the situation carefully and there are a worrying amount of “musts”. Despite the very many ways this plan can go very wrong we have decided to take it on. We make the call. We leave at first light.

The drive to Guadalajara is around 2 hours through winding switchback single lane roads and then a further 2 hours on the posh new toll highway and an hour to get into the city. We set off early with the promise of a dolly trailer that we can collect from our beloved mechanic in La Penita. The plan, if somehow successful, is to deliver our newly rescued machine and trailer to his shop in three day’s time. We contact our fixer-man to let him know we are on our way. He responds by indecipherable text messages and a few voice messages that lead us to believe he is very drunk at 11am.

Our bee man currently lives in Chapala and has asked us to collect and deliver a Yaka tree for him. We find his tree man on the winding highway who happily loads the tree into our van … along with a further 19 trees and three huge, heavy and very ripe Jack Fruit. Over the next few hours the van develops a strange sickly Jack fruity smell.

We contact the morons who eventually answer their phone. We say the word MUST a lot. They agree, better agree, promise and double promise to deliver the documents to the drunk fixer-man that very day.

We become aware that we are spending much more than budgeted on the various sections of toll road. It works out that as we have another set of wheels attached to the truck the toll booth computers are automatically charging us half as much again. As usual everything is happening in its own time and space so we are behind schedule and need to meet fixer-man in an hour. We decide it’s sorta worth it to pay the tolls to save the couple of hours of driving the alternative route would add to our day. We work out that the tolls on this section of highway alone will cost us significantly more than the average day wage here. It explains why we have the road pretty much to ourselves. There is no way most folk can afford to spend over a day’s wages to save two hours driving. It gives us hope that when they finish the highway next to us it will be equally ignored.

A rendezvous is arranged and we park up at an agreed spot in Guadalajara and contact fixer-man. He is on his way. Within ten minutes a relatively normal, cheerful and surprisingly sober bloke arrives. We are mightily relived. After some reassuring chat he takes our ID card and promises to be in touch the next day so we can meet him to collect the goods. We let him know the morons will deliver the documents he needs later that day. He gives us a look. He has dealt with the morons before. We can tell he is not confident.

Our hotel is rather posh, surprisingly inexpensive and located directly in the middle of a city that is not set up for parking a van and trailer. There follows quite a lot of buggering around with finding a parking lot and disconnecting the trailer and then losing our way back the hotel and failing in every way to find a place to eat. The city is packed with people and traffic and is a world away from our daily lives. We are tired and grumpy and after a few beers head back to the hotel to put this day to bed and prepare for our intervention in the morning. We shower the deeply ingrained muck from our bodies and irretrievably change the colour of a few hotel towels. Cleaner and exhausted we collapse on the large soft bed. We get a text message. By some miraculous shift in the Universe the morons have delivered the paperwork. We are on!

It’s too early but we get ourselves moving, retrieve the van and trailer and head to a much recommended spot close by. Tonola has all the things we buy locally and in PV for a fraction of the price. It’s particularly famous for cheap ceramics and tiles. We spend the hours awaiting the call from fixer-man by loading up on metal hardware, an oversize ceramic BBQ, a few ceramic mirrors and water dispensers. There are a heap of shops selling plaster statues for very few pesos. We have an idea of spray painting random animals, skulls and angels and hiding them in the jungle. May have got slightly carried away. Our van is now full of trees, stinky fruit, a huge BBQ, boxes of random ceramics, a number of plaster giraffes, a large jaguar, six Buddha’s, five skulls and an oversize cherub.

We get the call. Fixer-man has our stuff ! Good news. He now needs morons to transfer him the taxes he paid and his fee and we are good to go. The fun starts. We call moron to let her know we will be with her within the hour and she needs to send the money she agreed to pay. And so it begins. Tales of woe. Tales of hardship and toil. Tales of misery and starving children. In short she has spent all our money and is skint. She may be able to do something in the morning when she is expecting a payment. This was not an unexpected turn of events but non the less a touch frustrating. We decide to go and collect the jungle jeep. The time has come. No one is going to stop us. I haven’t shaved in a while and am somehow back to my usual mucky self so I’m not looking very civilized . We think this might help.

Onwards to Chapala which we remember as a quiet and picturesque place. We head straight to the shop and spot our very distinctive black and red machine parked on the road. Moron wife greets us and immediately starts talking. She keeps on talking and doesn’t take a breath. We listen to her endless apologies, excuses, poor me stories and promises of money in the morning. In the 20 months she has had our Jungle Jeep they haven’t done a thing to it. It’s exactly as we left it all that time ago… just with more dust and rust.

We get out of there as quickly as we can and head to see some friendly faces and some cold beers. I drive the beast following the van. This is a short but bum clenching journey. A few hundred yards down the road I’m scared. There is a huge amount of power for such a light weight chassis and the brakes aren’t up to controlling it. The back tyres lock up and I’m skidding and sliding along behind the van. It is with much relief that we arrive at our great friends who kindly agree to house the thing overnight. Good job we brought the dolly trailer.

We depart in the van to find our bee man and get rid of the stinky load. Our van is gratefully unloaded. He is living next door to his ex-wife who offers us a very cheap apartment room for the night. We are ready for sleep. It does not, however, take long to realize that we are not alone. Now we have all had a few mosquitos in our room before but nothing like this. There are hundreds of the little bastards. I hide pointlessly under the thin sheet and continue to get eaten as Jayne becomes frenzied with the buzzing in her ear holes. She leaps around the room smacking at them with her hands and swearing. She kills dozens of them but it makes little difference. It’s a miserable night compounded by the fact there is no water in the taps or shower or loo. We make our exhausted escape early to meet friends for breakfast.

Mexican driving licenses require you to declare your blood type. Neither of us have a clue what our blood types are. Enquiries to family doesn’t help either. We need a test. Chapala has a very high contingent of gringos of retirement age. One of the best places to retire in the world apparently. They have Goldilocks weather most of the year. Not too hot. Not too cold. One of the features of a town full of retirees is that there are health testing labs everywhere. We take advantage and donate some blood for testing. I am A+. Sounds like the best one to me.

After the blood distraction, we walk along the Malecon next to the lake. We stop for a bite in a fish restaurant overlooking the lake that serves the most amount of seafood for the least amount of pesos. While taking on the mound of fish we resign ourselves to the fact that there is no way moron will come up with any cash and that we need to pay the taxes. It’s not unexpected and we have decided to consider it a life tax. At least we get the jungle jeep home. We spend an age sending cash to fixer-man via the till system in a pharmacy and then head to confront the moron one last time. I’m full of fish and secretly quite enjoying the fact that I don’t have any need for the morons from this moment onwards so can dispense some honesty and not have to listen to any more of their bollocks. I find her and let her know in no uncertain terms my displeasure. I have developed a strategy so she is not off the hook. I have claimed to have borrowed the money for the taxes from a friend and that she now owes him the money. This lovely bloke happens to live close by, is well known to the morons and in a position to further damage the shop’s reputation in the town. He is well up for it. We may never see a peso of what she owes but we have removed the morons from our lives and that feels like a bargain.

Our friends load us into their car and take us into Guadalajara to meet fixer-man. Thankfully the traffic angels were with us and we manage to get in and out again with all our officialness completed and ID returned within 4 hours. Time for beers and burritos and an early turn in at another friends casita.

The quiet reputation of Chapala, however, is in serious doubt. The church fireworks start early and send shockwaves throughout the night. They annoyingly mark a random saint or virgin or event that no one can tell us about. Rumours abound that the church folk are bored and just like setting off fireworks and don’t need a reason anymore. To add to the night’s festivities at 3 am a full Mariachi band kicks off! At 4 am they start up again. Why??? It pays to have hearing loss in Chapala we have discovered.

It’s way too early when we finaly give in, get up and head for home. As usual nothing is straight forward. The jungle jeep starts after the addition of more fuel and a spray of carb cleaner in the air-inlet. We then discover that the GMC Jimmy 4×4 on which this thing is built won’t work with two wheels on the ground and will wreck the transmission. We can’t find a way of disconnecting the drive shaft so we have to take the whole assembly out entirely. That takes some doing. We are finally on our way by about 10.30 am. Just in time to meet static traffic. A lorry of apples has overturned on the switch back road and the queue goes back for miles in both directions. Further joy as we discover the tolls are now double for us with two vehicles. It takes us 8 hours to get to La Penita and off load the Jungle Jeep and the trailer at our mechanic’s shop. It takes a further tortuous hour and we are on our way back to the peace of our treehouse which we have missed so much. We need to sleep. We are somehow contented by the very weary satisfaction of a tough job completed. In a few weeks time we will have our properly restored Jungle Jeep to play with. At last.

We park the van by the pool and I head up the hill with a gallon of oil to top up the Razor and then drive it down the hill to collect all our stuff. The plan hits a snag when I find the Razor entirely gone. In exactly the place where the Razor was there is nothing. I head straight for the tree house. The door is locked but as soon as I open it it becomes very clear that we have been robbed. The house is a mess of papers and destruction.

This is a new experience for me. I have, mercifully, never been burgled before. My reaction was surprisingly calm. Before I could even take stock of what was missing I considered what would have happened if I had been I the house at the time. I truly believe that would have been very messy and very serious; the consequences of which I really don’t want to consider. I could be in prison, on the run or dead. So we have lost some stuff but we are ok and it’s only stuff. The cats happily continue to knock lumps out of each other and appear pleased to see us. Most of my most valued items remain. My beloved tea mug. My frog carved for me by a 7 year old Balinese boy still flies on the ceiling. All my SWAG necklaces, masks and art from my travels still hang from the walls. For some reason they didn’t take any of my magnificent shirts ???

Jayne is also measured but clearly shocked. She rings 911 and surprise surprise no answer. Now what do we do? We call our man who turns up for support and I take a large stick and go and check out the rest of the buildings and workshop to see what has been taken. Thankfully nothing else has been disturbed. We have a fabulous mate in town who is very connected with police matters. She is a force and gets the local vigilante group out immediately to take a look and then goes to the next town to get the police as the San Pancho police are not home! It’s Friday night at 8 pm and when the Police show up they are just a bit too relaxed. Because we have opened the door and entered the place they are not interested. They won’t take fingerprints or DNA as the scene has been contaminated by me entering??? One of the police officers takes a statement. The education levels here are basic and frustratingly he has the writing skills of an 8 years old and the comprehension skills a few years below that. He asks us to list everything that is missing but we aren’t allowed in the house or to touch anything. Somehow we manage to stay calm in the face of incompetence. We agree to visit the police office in the morning and make a full statement. At least they have come out which helps with our insurance. We are told that a year ago it would take them weeks to even turn up.

At times like this there is a tendency to be paranoid and suspect people and unreasonably extrapolate any information people give you and it can drive you quite mad. As far as we know the Razor was the target. It is one of the most identifiable vehicles in the whole of the state. There isn’t another one like it and it’s loud enough to be heard a mile away and everyone but everyone knows it belongs to us. It’s likely the Razor was being watched and stolen to order. It’s likely out of the country or in some far off state by now. Our house was targeted to get the spare key out of our lock box. In the meantime they took a few suitcases and filled them with everything of value. Laptops, kindles, hard-drives, headphones, torches, power packs, jewellery, speakers, knives, stuff, stuff, stuff. No idea how well our insurance will cover us but it should take some of the sting out of it financially. The big losses for us are Jayne’s jewellery which has immeasurable sentimental value and the huge volumes of photos & data we will never recover. We won’t be leaving the place empty again. Our mistake.

People have been exceptionally kind with their offers of help. After some careful consideration, we would like to ask for something. We would like anyone who knows us (or hasn’t met us yet) to send us photos of our time together (or not together). All the big scale art projects, family, festivals, parties, surfs and feasts photos have all gone so if you have any of those then please send us a copy. In fact if there are any photos you know would make us smile please send them. You can keep any you may have of cats and babies. It’s possible to survive without those ones for now. Jayne has created this link to make it easy and so we can do some curating. We very much look forward to see what we get!

We both very much appreciate the love & support chucked our way. We really are OK but with a lot less stuff.

Apologies for the lack of relevant photos but we don’t have many left. This was written on a borrowed laptop. Normal service will be resumed at some point. In the meantime here are some random ones of our cats.

Jungle Journal

Summer’s coming ….

May 21, 2019May 21, 2019
by Beave

Arriving back home even after just a few days away is a wonderful thing. Back to tranquility of the familiar jungle noises. We only have a few days before Jake, Rosy and Pablo leave so after very little discussion it is decided upon that this is the best excuse to have a jungle party. We set a date and start preparations.

We also discover to our glee that for the first time our newly beloved Lucha Libre wrestlers are performing in our town square. This is very exciting news. We are now fully blooded Lucha Libre fans and have masks which we are not afraid to use. This may in retrospect have been a miscalculation. We arrive in time to learn that the first fight was delayed an hour so we all file in to our local beer purveyor. Drinking with a wrestling mask on is not recommended by the way. We are fully lubricated for the first match and are ready for the action. So are about a hundred feral kids that are running about in wild packs screaming for blood. The fights are somewhat less realistic than the Mexico City pros but non the less entertaining. The kids become braver and take the event very seriously. Pablo and I are wearing our masks and Pablo certainly is looking very authentic. This somehow encourages a number of the smallest kids to take it upon themselves to attack. They launch into us with kicks and punches. We spot their parents who reluctantly remove them by the scruff of their necks and thank us. Apparently the whole event has over excited them to an uncontrollable frenzy and at least giving us a going over has calmed them down a bit. Happy we can help.

Huge hairy blokes are now leaping out the ring onto other large lumps of lycra and hitting the floor loudly. At this point gangs of slightly larger but non the less frenzied kids jump onto them putting the boot in. Parents have given up any hope of restoring order and look the other way while slugging tequila. The announcers are deeply stressed and quite sensibly predict there will soon be a squashed flat child to deal with. They loudly beg and plead with parents to intervene. Miserable drunken fathers are ushered by equally drunken mothers to shout at their unhearing and entirely delirious little thugs. It’s very amusing. The show goes on till it’s almost too dark to see the vast glittery costumes flying around. Pablo is slightly put off by the child violence but we retire back to the pub to seriously consider his career path.

Jake and Rosy and Pablo’s farewell party is well attended and a lot of fun. It’s tough as always to say goodbye to this lot as they head back to a Dublin bar, a London theatre and a muddy field somewhere that needs power. At some point in the evening the girls decided to introduce pink hair dye to selected gentleman. I was one of the lucky ones and ended up with a pink braid in the back of my hair for some days afterwards. Others were not so lucky., The large blob of pink randomly splodged somewhere on your head look takes some getting used to.

Pablo considering his Lucha Libre future

The construction of the highway has taken a break. There are still a few machines working now and again but the initial tear in the jungle is made and awaits the giants arriving at some point in the future to construct the bridges and make the space for the actual tarmac. Not looking forward to that. Wild life has been seriously disrupted. The birds have returned after doing a vanishing act when the machines moved in. The jaguar sanctuary has been placing night cameras around us to monitor activity as the road has already cut through their territory. After just a week they have identified ten separate jaguars. They have advised caution as they are recently displaced so probably not in the best of moods. They are indisputably top of the food chain around here and at least one of them is over 100kg. We have an early warning system as the local dogs are trained to protect the cattle and go wildly insane in the middle of the night when they smell one close enough.

Mausetrappe can’t exactly protect our land on her own so we decide to take on another jungle cat. Our friends have just rescued one from the jaws of a German Shepherd and are looking for a home for him. He is a particularly ugly black and white 6 weeks old feral kitten. We call him Gargoyle because his face would not look out of place on the corner of a church. He is very tiny at the moment and daft as a brush but we bring him home (via the pub) to see how long he can survive. Mausetrappe has initial reservations but the thing proves fearless and/or dumb as a rock and so after a few days of them literally running up the walls in order to noisily knock lumps out of each other they have settled down to a sustainable level of co-existence. Mausetrappe helpfully brought a large rat/mouse into the tree house for Gargoyle to play with. After two days of torturing the poor bugger I caught what was left and chucked it into the jungle. It’s a daily mix of irritation and entertainment.

My own most recent self-imposed task has been to replace a load of timber that is disintegrating on the tree house. I have had the wood to do this since our yoga deck project but the right amount of time and enthusiasm haven’t coincided since we became busy with guests and life. I take on replacing or mending all the many esthetic and structural bits on our stairs and front deck that had been nibbled away by bugs or the climate. This is a rare opportunity to do something by myself in my own way. I very much appreciate these moments. I pace myself while listening to BBC podcasts and slowly make satisfying progress. There will be many more of these projects ahead and I’m happy about that. Less laundry more carpentry.

We have been persuaded to meet up with a bunch of mates to introduce ourselves the very popular San Pancho sporting phenomenon that is pickle ball. There are a few pickle ball courts in the almost abandoned local Hacienda. The San Pancho Hacienda is a fairly fancy series of buildings that house some outstanding art pieces in a prime location near the beach. For reasons not quite disclosed there are no people. It’s residential buildings remain mostly unoccupied and the rooms full of sculptures and artwork are locked. It’s becoming tatty and run down which is a real shame. So in this rather odd but potentially beautiful location we smash a plastic ball over a net with bats. It certainly has the potential to be fun. It does not require the knee strength of tennis and there is not so much moving around as badminton so it’s a great leveler for those of all ages. An hour or so later I consider myself a natural, have mastered the game and can now take on the town’s finest pros for many hours of high stakes pickle ball. Not sure everyone is in agreement but what do they know.

Our jungle bar area has become an occasional venue for a gaggle of “us locals’ to meet up. We know a growing number of folks from a bunch of places that are making San Pancho their home. Some are buying land and others well into the process of building their own houses. Some committed to growing businesses here and others securing rental properties for their six months winter breaks and working out ways to make it longer. The girls are becoming very good at making plans that get us out of our day to day stuff and bring us all together. Apart from the occasional compulsory birthday drinking we have indulged in games nights, a murder mystery night, pool parties and some quite spectacular feeds. All great excuses to practice the art of tequila drinking while staying awake. I thought by now we would be better at that but alas my tolerance to the agave is as low as it ever was. I will bravely persevere.

We have met a slightly mad English chef who has been in Mexico for 18 years riding horses, cooking and being married to a Mexican wife. He runs a pop up restaurant nearby and his food is widely regarded as excellent. Pretty much every good chef I know is slightly or entirely mad so he meets the profile. He is inspired to create a unique menu inspired by ancient travellers in Mexico and serve it in the jungle, cooked over fire and with no plates. We are inspired by the lack of washing up required so we are in! We are sold out within a few days and make preparations. What I did not immediately grasp was the amount of work “no plates” involves. I spend countless hours digging clay to encase potatoes, cutting and polishing bamboo into serving dishes, cutting palm fronds and knock up another two large parota tables to construct a “pass”. By the time the night arrives I am knackered and hungry. Keeping the fires burning for eight exquisitely presented courses for twenty people proves a challenge so the night was a late one but on the whole went down rather well. Certainly lots of time to practice the art of drinking tequila and staying awake.

We are now in a post Semana Santa (Easter) end of season run down. Still have a fair amount of guests and friends visiting but bookings are tailing off and most of the wintering Canadians and Americans have used up their 6 month tourist visas and won’t return until well after the rains have gone. We are taking time to do things we want to do in our own time and space. That is a luxury we have missed. This brings a real sense of relief. A lot of what we want to do involves very little and an overdue peace has descended on our jungle home. We are spending entire days not going into town for water or laundry or supplies. There have even been the rare days when we have hardly left the tree house. Probably first time since we got here. We get to appreciate the space we have created and chose to reset and take a breath and just be.

Easter was best part of a month later than last year and came and went with much less drama than anticipated. We were all dreading another two solid weeks of annual madness. The beach was covered in tents but the crowds were considerably less. The mob arrived late in the week and left early. One of the local corner shops always stocks up with the popular Mexican beer choice Corona Light. It is fairly impossible to move around the shop as the stacks of tins is up to ceiling and covers most of the space not taken up with biscuits and nachos. Usually within the first week of Easter it’s all sold out. This year it is still impossible to move around the shop a week later. There will be a super sale on a truck load of Corona light cans and nachos very soon we predict.

We have Django the van back. Last seen on the side of the road with a half dead Englishman in it. We are slowly getting it ready to make a trip to the USA later in the year where we can clear out all the very useful stuff we have in The Growler (which has been our Burning man home for many years) and potentially sell it. There could be one last jaunt to Burning Man on the cards but we will see how that goes. Django is now significantly quieter as an entirely new exhaust system now replaces the rusted one we had which was full of holes. Who knew? The transmission system is new new and the engine purrs. Have some shocks on order and think we should be good to go. It’s only done 485 000 km so far and we have to try and break the half million.

So life has taken a turn here. It will be a number of months before we can expect to make any money out of rentals or dinners. Ironically, after 18 months of trying , we have finally managed to get our immigration cards that allow us to earn money here and pay tax. We really want to do things properly but the systems here make it near impossible without a degree in patience and knowledge of the very many beyond ridiculous and strangely secretive administration hurdles. Thankfully Jayne has both.

We expect our motivation to do more things will return in a few weeks. Our prime mission over the coming months is to get our place ready to host retreats. If we complete our kitchen project and make a few simple upgrades then we can promote yoga, bird watching, cooking, silent meditation or maybe even Lucha Libre retreats. This will certainly keep me busy till the rains stop. It is already getting hotter but I think we have a month or so left before it’s unbearable to push your body around.

There is an exciting new arrival in our not so distant future. We somehow persuaded/inspired a highly skilled metal work artist to create us a sculpture that will cover our well head. He has always wanted to create a turtle sculpture and we readily agreed. It will be hinged so we have access to the well but also lockable so others do not. The well is one of the first things you see as you enter through our gates so this will be a feature piece for us. We were called a few days ago to inspect progress so far. All that is required is a funky paint job and we are good to go! Can’t wait for our yet to be named new turtle mate to appear.

Jungle Journal

Friends & Frigates

March 21, 2019March 21, 2019
by Beave

The eyesore of a condominium building on the beach that we have been bitching about for months has attracted some very high level attention. The Punta Paraiso development is clearly infringing on the public beach which is a known turtle breeding site. In order to get permission to build there was clearly and obviously a serious level of corruption. Our new president AMLO was voted in on an anti-corruption ticket and has started an investigation to find out the story. There is a chance the thing will be stopped or even taken down. The whole of the town turns out for a march to the beach in support of tearing the building down and bringing the corrupt officials to justice. It’s an impressive turnout and some fun is to be had protesting next to dancing horses, leaping stilt walkers and an very enthusiastic lady dressed as a turtle. No idea if this will have the desired effect but you never know. All eyes on AMLO.

We have been steadily prompted (repeatedly nagged) to do another jungle dinner. The last one was a roaring success so there is a bit of pressure to get it right again. We have found a chef from Montreal and after some tortuous shopping trips have finally collected the correct number of plates, glasses, and cutlery. No mean feat that. We take many hours re-sanding the huge Parota tables that are looking less than perfect after the rainy season humidity. Our attempts at hand sanding and varnish now look distinctly shabby. After many hours of play with my lovely new sexy electric sanding machine and a surprisingly large number of sanding belts they are looking their spectacular best.

Tables spruced up and proper posh. Photo: John Curley

Jake is positioned behind the bar. Friends are recruited as waitresses , entertainment and general help. New lights are created from old plastic pressurized beer barrels. Tables set , glasses polished and wine chilled. Our paying guests arrive. 18 of them this time.

Porota Wood looking well buffed. Photo: John Curley

Full House of Happy Punters Photo: John Curley

It all runs rather swimmingly. The food is extraordinary and much better than I expected. The wines match. The music plays. The chat is easy and there is much laughter. There is also much juggling of plates and food through jungle paths in the dark but no disasters. All leave happy. We promise to do it again before they all depart North for Summer to avoid the worst of the humidity. Most of the winter avoiders will have gone soon after Easter.

Our post office in town has our miss-spelt names written outside it. We have had a number of calls from friends in town telling us that there is mail for us to collect. We wait for the one hour a week when it is open. An ancient deaf lady collects mail for the town and attempts to distribute it from her tiny office. When we arrive she has her head down on the desk, her wrinkled eyes appear shut and is unresponsive to our shouts and waving of hands to get her attention. She may be asleep or deep in thought or…. The poor thing nearly ends herself with shock as Jayne taps her on the shoulder. Grumpily she hands us a slightly overdue Christmas Card from Australia in exchange for 5 pesos. Our first mail.

T’is certainly getting warmer. These past few months we have been blessed with Goldilocks weather. Not too hot… not too cold… just right. The sweaty times are, however, approaching fast. I expect to be damp and uncomfortable to touch for the next six months. Oh joy.

We have taken some advantage of the climate and allowed ourselves more working days. Productivity has taken a leap.

Our yoga deck now has a sturdy wooden handrail to prevent yogi wannabees toppling into the jungle. There is also the addition of a large Mandela image created for us on the freshly painted white bathroom building to encourage us clean the place up and get the water plumbed in.

We have a brand new palapa roofed structure which with some imagination, luck and effort will become our new outdoor kitchen next to the bar. This will avoid the need for us to juggle plates and food precariously over great distances in the dark. This will allow us to hold further jungle dinners and catered events with much less risk and effort.

Our tiles in the brick sh*t house bathroom have been grouted and polished to a sexy sheen. This has inspired me to add art to the place. I am currently attempting to reproduce some simple Mayan graphic symbols in strategic places. Bit fiddly but getting the hang of it. There is a lot of talk and planning for further art installations. A friend in town is in process of welding together an impressive turtle sculpture that will adorn our well head. Our favorite artist is due back with us soon to transform more of our walls with fabulous murals. Endless possibilities.

Finally we have addressed the issue of creating an appropriate space for our growing hammock collection. Despite the large amount of trees we have to choose from there are few spaced correctly in the areas we would want to suspend ourselves for long periods. We identify a perfect lounging spot not far from the casitas. It provides seclusion and shade and has a rather splendid tree in the centre of an overgrown but very pretty jungle spot. There is much effort added as the area is strewn with logs and debris and thick bush. Our gravel is extended down a freshly cut log lined pathway. Two posts are concreted in at perfect distance from the central tree. Within a day we are able to install four hammocks from the centre point. At long last we have the required sanctuary in our secret hammock lounge clearing.

There are few regular local community events (except sunset) . A small restaurant bar called La Buena Vida (The Good Life) hosts “Open Mic Night” every Tuesday which has become the town meeting spot during “the season”. The bar is almost entirely empty for the rest of the week but on Tuesdays it is rammed until the early hours. For such a small town there is a large pool of musical talent. Some very gifted musicians that jam with the less gifted to keep the standard high and the stage full all night. We have many friends & guests who play and more who come to watch.

We are lucky enough to have some very highly skilled professional musicians with worldwide reputations as neighbours. The San Pancho music festival in February every year is a showcase to the local talent. This is the 19th year of an event that started in someone’s back yard and now attracts regular visitors & performers from around the world . It is held at the town square close to our beloved Ceveceria which makes for a very good weekend. We befriend a Californian professional jazz trumpet player who is visiting for a few weeks to go fishing and play the music festival. We encourage him to visit us and bring his instruments. We take the hike up to the waterfall pools. He positions himself at the top of the falls with the valley below and plays. To the background of running water Chet Baker classics fill the trees. The acoustics are stunning. It’s my Dad’s birthday. It’s a memorable moment.

Our Vanilla beans are demanding some attention. They have finished growing now and have turning a yellow hue. Some more mature examples are brown at their tip. We harvest these ones. Each lucky bean is then bathed in water at precisely 60 degrees celcius. When carefully dried each is lovingly sunbathed during the day and then wrapped cozily in wool each night to rest. These incredibly spoilt beans will enjoy this care for some weeks until they are cured and fully black gooey & vanillary. There is a growing number of beans awaiting sun bronzing and nights in my socks. Should be a good haul eventually.

Over-Loved Beans preparing for a night in my socks

Friends of ours have just left for California to pack up their stuff after agreeing to buy land here. We are helping them with the process. They have managed to acquire a stunning spot away from the town overlooking the sea at Lo De Marcos. This is the stretch of coast where we have been seeing huge humpback whales leaping out of the water close to the beach. She came to stay with us a year ago with her daughter and fell in love with the place. The whole family came down to check out land and schooling for the kids and now they are soon to be our newest neighbours. It’s strange to hear how visiting this place and seeing what we are doing can influence life changing decisions like this for other people. Not the first time and we suspect not the last. They remind us that it’s the things we don’t do in life that we often regret the most.

I am currently suffering from a bad dose of PMT. Pre-Match Tension. Wales this coming Saturday have the opportunity to win for the 14^th time in a row, beat Ireland and secure the Six Nations, Triple crown and Grand slam. Full house. I’ve been fiddling with VPNs and other such techy stuff so that I can persuade the BBC that I am in fact watching TV on a sofa drinking tea in Tunbridge Wells, UK rather than on a laptop upon a large Parota table outside in the jungles of Mexico with a bottle of Mezcal. I get up early and have managed to watch all the games so far from the jungle. International Rugby at it’s best and a great tribute to my Dad. It’s been emotional. Just one more time. It’s the hope that hurts.

Our plans to burn an art piece on the beach developed in a very short time due to the motivation of a few enthusiastic & talented folk. In order to capture the seriousness by which we all approach these things we have called ourselves The Coconut Lady Man Burn Crew. This in recognition of our first burn on the beach last year when our artists created a Lady Man with distinct coconut features. A similar piece will be represented in this year’s structure for continuity purposes.

In order to make this event as participatory and inclusive as we can we have evolved the idea of burning a large frigate bird. The extraordinary black silhouettes of huge frigate birds are a feature of the sky everyday in Lo De Marcos. Instead of a single artist or group being responsible for the art we encourage everyone who attends to participate. We have asked all of our invited guests to bring their own representation of a frigate bird to add to a base structure which we will burn. We have encouraged people to leave messages or icons in the structure that represent things in their life that they would like to change or let go of. As the fire is lit everyone will watch in silence until the structure falls. That silence and the experience of watching the fire can be transformative We will all meet up on the day and throw something together. We have musicians, DJ and fire spinning for the after party.

Considering the highly seat of the pants nature of our planning and execution Lo De Marcos Frigate Burn 2019 was a special evening. At least 70 people made the walk up the beach to participate. There was a solid crew of people helping carrying wood, building frigate birds, creating the structure and the art piece.

Art Captured beautifully by Art Artist : Eva. Photo: John Curley

Lighting her up as the sun throws it’s colours into the clouds.

The sunset was appropriately gorgeous . The art piece that evolved was beautiful. The burn was very pretty & safe. The silence was observed perfectly. There were many tears and prayers in that silence. We then all tucked in to a fabulous beach after-party under the stars. Over the course of my extended midlife crisis I have been involved with dozens of “burns” of this type in many parts of the world and in some cases involving vast crowds. This humble cooperative burn on our local beach under the colours of sunset was as good as it gets.

Jungle Journal

Sea Songs & Chicken Woes

February 11, 2019February 11, 2019
by Beave

There comes a time when even the most reliable of us gets tired and has a break down. This appears to be the time for Pauly our Polaris Razor ATV. We are in possession of a brand new rack & pinion that appeared under our mate’s Mum’s Californian Christmas tree and was duly smuggled down. With great skill, new tools and patience we remove the old one in situ neck deep in a bunch of jungle and install the new. We start her up and she runs and steers like a dream until she doesn’t anymore. We get a good 10 minutes out of her. Slightly depressing.

We resign ourselves to assistance and a trailer is dispatched to remove her to a location more equipped with skill and tools. Steering apart there is a worrying noise coming from the rear CV joint and after a further quickly arranged smuggle we have a new CV joint from Canada. Our genius new favorite mechanic manufactures parts in his magic workshop and presents us with a sparkly clean and fully functional machine in but a few days. Turns out our deep jungle mechanicing has been of excellent quality but we had somehow installed a brand new faulty part! He manages to repair & reinstall the original parts. Our friends are flying back to California and so we send the pointless brand new much travelled faulty part back with them to return to Santa for a full refund.

We have agree to deliver Limonada (our dodgy pick up truck) in exchange for a happy working Pauly. We have decided to sell it and remove the many issues that accompany her from our lives. In a fit of over enthusiasm and confidence our now much loved mechanic agrees to buy her! We take his lovely arm off. Farewell Limonada!!

All is well again. We don’t have to bounce around in the thirsty van at snail’s pace anymore. Speed and efficiency is restored to our lives. Good job as the rivers and roads are drying up and slippy dust and slidey stones have coated everything. Our joy lasts but a few days… there is a sudden and inexplicable horrible noise coming from the drive shaft. The trailer is called in. We are back in the van.

Our chickens are having a rather disastrous few weeks. Late one night the frantic flapping wings and strange munching noises awakes me. I am curious and little wary so investigate from the safety of the balcony. My torch disturbs silent dark shapes that move quickly away from the chicken house. I take a large sharp stick and brace myself to take a closer look. Something has eaten the side of the chicken house and the chickens are extremely unimpressed. Chief suspects are Coatis. They look cute enough but they are far from it when they are hungry or cornered. We keep the chucks inside for a day or two to settle. Egg laying has all but stopped. Coati’s attack does not make for a relaxed egg-laying environment.

In but a week we are down to three chickens. An egg layer and Sister Bland have vanished. Snakes/eagles/coatis/dogs all love a bite of chicken. A few days later we collect our very first white egg. Chickens only lay the same coloured eggs. The conclusion is that Sister Bricklebank, the last of the original five, is laying eggs at last!! The good news is short lived. Three days later she has vanished too. Down to two chickens. I return home after Sunday Birria breakfast to a disturbing find. The intact body of another chicken is abandoned on the path to our house with gruesome evidence of a clean kill. Coatis have been spotted who are almost certainly the culprits. We are down to one chicken.

Our lovely mechanic has not only agreed to return Pauly in full working order yet again but is to deliver us six replacement chickens. We are designing a Coatis proof area for our single remaining free range chicken and her new mates to be slightly less free, certainly less rangey and many times safer.

In exchange for Limonada our mechanic has also agreed to give us a lump of cash and manufacture us a bespoke trailer for Pauly. The trailer will be used to fetch and carry dirt, tools, sand, plants and gravel but also have removable seats so we can ferry more people around. Theoretically this removes the need for a pick up truck for the foreseeable future. For now the vehicle fleet is down by one needy and costly machine.

There is, however, the long forgotten jungle jeep. We bought this machine a full 16 months ago. It is still in the unbelievably lazy mechanics shop in Chapala. The news is that the American wife of this lovely but entirely useless Mexican mechanic spotted that having vehicles in the shop for over a year is not the best business model and pretty much fired him. She has taken the helm and in the past few weeks made it drivable and is currently working on the paperwork. We are advised that we can collect her so we arrange that. The day arrives to leave but the latest news regards the availability of fuel means we have to postpone. There is pretty much no petrol in the state of Jalisco. Even Guadalajara has very little. Long lines at Pemex stations for hours to collect a very limited amount. We abandon the trip. The jungle jeep is still, unsurprisingly, in the shop 4 hours away but somehow it feels closer. The vehicle fleet will soon, perhaps, be up one more needy and costly machine, maybe.

There is an outside chance the jungle jeep is coming home

The yoga deck has manifested. Many hours of wood preparation, cutting and reinforcing, sanding, careful placement, staining and sore backs later we have a rather splendid yoga deck. There is more to do. Handrails, tiling and a roof commeth soon. But we have a functional yoga deck from whence we do yoga and see birds and jungle and listen to the noise of those bastards cutting down the jungle to make their road. Thankfully we can’t see them and they have all but moved on for now but there has been much pointless but cathartic cursing in their direction from the peaceful sanctuary of our yoga deck.

The Mexican fuel shortages alongside the inexplicable USA Government being closed for a month has seriously reduced the amount of tourist traffic to San Pancho. Mexicans can’t get here as they are saving their fuel for food collection and other such activities. Americans, we are told, just can’t make sense of the nonsense happening at home so are’t traveling anywhere. We are selfishly delighted as less people in town is an altogether nicer vibe and we have still been very busy with our guests. Some shops and businesses in the town are less happy about it.

We are treated to a rather spectacular lunar eclipse in the jungle. It’s 11.30pm and there is just enough night sky showing through the canopy. We stand in the moon shadows of the jungle watching the earth’s shadow moving across the moon’s face. Slowly she turns a rather extraordinary shade of red. Mesmerising stuff .

This is a real photo delivered thanks to the skills of John Curley.

The dusty roads have been settling in the baking sun and, in places of high traffic, long buried power conduit is emerging. In some stubborn areas we have trenched the lines deeper and deeper, under roots and rocks and packed with clay. This happens with irritating frequency. Despite the effort the stuff still pops up now and again. I am walking the steep pathway back up to the house and stop to examine a particularly frustrating spot and add a few rocks to the trench to make it heavier. It is a good job I stopped as some yards ahead of me a huge lump of heavy Bromeliads falls loudly and dramatically from very high up directly onto the path ahead. I calculate, slightly paranoiacally but pretty accurately, that they have fallen in exactly the spot I would have been if I had not stopped. Saved by a dodgy conduit trench.

My son Jake has left his life in Europe and moved to Mexico for a few months of rest while he contemplates his next adventures. He has had three months in Berlin and a couple in Dublin working the high end bar scene where he has been “deprived of daylight, children and nature” It’s a wild and exciting life until it isn’t anymore and so this is a much needed break. San Pancho is short of a good cocktail bar so there are endless possibilities. He is broken in immediately with yoga deck construction followed by the great gravel day.

We are awoken to the news that a large dump truck has arrived with many tons of gravel and is keen to unload it. We ordered it only a few days ago and were expecting a few weeks before it arrived but here it is. Much maneuvering of the huge truck and we have a medium size mountain of gravel in front of the casitas where there are a few sleeping guests and a motorbike. Our guests are thankfully understanding but we can’t leave it here for long. My slightly hungover son is armed with shovel. A painfully physical number of hours later the mountain of tiny rocks becomes a series of paths and a large gravel area hiding what was previously an ugly patch of post rainy season mud and weeds. The guest and motorbike are free to go. Good effort but we are both fully and totally exhausted.

Jayne has two girlfriends from Vancouver staying who are keen to help. While we are moving bucket after bucket of increasingly heavy rock our friends are keeping busy creating new flower beds areas. The girls have taken a trip to the local vivero (plant nursery) and returned with a van bursting with trees and plants and bags of earth and tiles. As they create new rock lined earthy areas we lay pathways around them. Various plants and trees are abundantly placed, fertilised and watered. We now have Cacao, Coffee, Fig, Lemon, avocado, grapefruit and orange trees. We also have much better knowledge about how to keep all this stuff from ending up inside cutter ants or dead from lack of attention.

At the same time we are transforming the outside space one of our more ambitious girl friends has taken on the task of tiling the floor of the Brick Sh*t house shower block.

It has been an unexpectedly intense, highly productive flurry of satisfying activity. We now have planted flower beds and numerous trees surrounded by gravel pathways and a tiled shower room. It’s properly tidied the place up.

A large group is assembled and primed for what turns out to be a not so super Superbowl Sunday. The mass of people who gather are great fun. It’s a real excuse to get everyone together. The venue is our French friends restaurant in town where we helped them install a large projector to show endless surf videos interspersed with American Football matches these past few weeks. Despite the game being historically mind numbingly dull it saves us all from paying any serious attention to it. This allows us all to interact and imbibe a touch more than is absolutely necessary . A very good day that we refused to allow a very poor game to spoil.

There are semi-secret moves in motion to create another sunset burn on the beach at Los De Marcos in the next few weeks. We have a theme (the majestic local Fragata birds) and a location and actual officially real world permissions from officialdom. We are now in the process of arranging a select eclectic audience and getting something sexy arranged to burn. We have surveyed the burn site to make sure there are no turtle nests to disturb and have banned fireworks that would disturb the birds & wildlife. When all goes to plan it will be a fun, relaxed and a low stress event. After our initial coco lady man burn during the Summer Solstice last year our upcoming Fragata burn is attracting much attention and enthusiasm. Good to have the ever expanding coco lady man crew back together.

On the 24th Of February we invite anyone and everyone to create a Fragata bird out of any size and of any burnable media and bring it to the North beach in Lo De Marcos. It will become part of the art installation we will burn at sunset. Invoke in your Fragata bird the many and varied things you wish to release from your life that no longer serve you. This is an opportunity to let go of them all in the fire.

We take the unusual and wise decision to take a whole day off. Our first whole day off for many many weeks. Friends arrive and we start with a long jungle breakfast of freshly baked Southern style “biscuits” and squeezed oranges. An overdue sprawl at our majestic waterfalls is followed by a walk into town to see sunset. The sea swell is high and the waves lift us as the sun turns the sky a thousand shades. Pelicans dive bomb into the sea catching fish all around us as we float and watching the show. We are required to dive under the larger waves to save from drowning. While the waves move loudly over our heads we notice a stunning phenomena. Under the waves we can clearly hear the whales singing. Distinctively different sonic tones as calfs communicate with their mothers. Clear and unmistakeable whale song. Unbelievable but we all confirm it’s really happening. A glorious humbling moment of immersion with nature. A fine day off we concur.

Our last chicken has followed us around like a puppy for days. She is clearly a little lonely by herself. This comes to a sudden end as Jayne spots a dark shape appear suddenly from the jungle and carry her off. Ironically this just one day after this honorary facebook post dedicated to her by one of our guests:

This is Cinnamon. Cinnamon is the only survivor of the La Colina Project chicken assassin. She has avoided its murderous clutches because she is a feathery ninja. And has Cinnamon let the trauma of watching her sisters be picked off one by one stopped her from living her best jungle life, or laying her morning egg, or having dust baths in the sunshine or sassily posing for photos as she struts all over the place? HELL NO. Cinnamon is one BADASS MOTHERCLUCKER. We should all be a bit more like Cinnamon.

Jungle Journal

Armadillo in the fridge & a techno handbag

January 18, 2019January 18, 2019
by Beave

The New Year is upon us all and we get to look ahead with the benefit of looking back. Making loose plans to make our lives better, happier, easier, more fulfilling Working out what is working and what can be improved. No pressure. We can all prevaricate easily for a month and if nothing changes we will be well into 2019 so can drink just as much and settle into the same comfortable bad habits guilt free.

We have identified a missing element that we have not prioritized enough in 2018 and is a game changer. There is a lack of excellent music in our lives because we haven’t invested in a reliable music device that is practical and impressive enough. We are motivated to fix this issue quickly. During a rare visit to the big city we are tempted by a huge Mexican electronic box with the promise of loud Mexican style music delivery with a microphone to further irritate the neighbours. We are seduced and buy one. The big black box of promise lasts an hour of blue-toothed tunes before picking up some random clicks, farts and whistles that don’t really add to the experience. Our $28 USD investment is perhaps not the value we were looking for.

Our mates who run the Cerveceria in town use a rather sexy single box of tricks to ply excellent quality tunes upon its customers. We identify one and return the big black box of promise and exchange it for what looks like a high tech handbag. It’s sound is amazing and we now have no excuse to trawl our endless supply of obscure and classic tracks hidden on endless devices. Over a three month period during 2017 I transformed my entire CD collection of thirty years into a tiny plastic box. This box is now delivering a frightening amount of music through my laptop to the techno-handbag and into our jungle. It’s fab.

These past days have been a rolling feast. Xmas Eve we were presented with extraordinary freshly caught fish and other white food. Our friends who have one of the most impressive homes in the town and a strong Norwegian heritage feed us their traditional white pre-Xmas fare.

The Beef Wellington Xmas day get together goes swimmingly. Great food and company till just late enough. Lots of help with tidy up in the morning. Again our free bar created considerably more booze than we started with. We again are reminded of fairly significant impracticalities when creating four Beef Wellingtons in the jungle. The most obvious of these is that the only oven we have is a treacherous hike down a very slippy hill, a jungle road, and a contortion through a cow gate to get to it. The secret to creating good food out here is mostly not dropping stuff. Our twin burner on which we cook pretty much everything has become a single burner and recently started to manufacture soot at an alarming rate.

We have succumbed to circumstances and taken a further plunge and invested in an oven for the tree house. It takes some rearranging of fridges and space to make room but somehow it all slots in. The fridge is cleaned out before moving it. The same fridge that only days before was home to an Armadillo that the neighbours were trying to keep fresh as a treat for their boss to eat. Bonus is we find some forgotten delights. Mustards and precious horseradish. The oven being so close does have the advantage of encouraging pecan pie and other delights to appear more regularly. It also means that I will not have to make four separate 20 minute missions in the dark to babysit one Beef Wellington ever again. Henry our new horno (oven) is installed. Let’s see how he works out.

There are further additions to our lives which have been coming for a long time. I have been constantly and enthusiastically informed over many many weeks that there are two things that my life cannot be complete without. I am less persuaded by the argument but have a strong desire to change the conversation so I surrender and drag two of the heaviest chairs I have ever had the joy of owning up our many stairs and somehow squeeze them into our lives. She is very happy. As is the cat that is now permanently installed in one of them.

Sad news. Hey–hey our half chewed chicken became, as predicted, eagle food. Well a snack anyway. We do miss the ugly little thug. The culprit has been identified as the large evil bugger we spotted on the chicken house. It’s a Collared Forest Falcon; the top bird predator out here. They are also called orgasm birds. At sunrise and sunset they make a distinctive high pitched sound that is often mistaken for particularly successful love making. Oooo-OOoo-OOOoooo-OOOOOoooo-AAAhhhhhhhh….. We have heard them often but didn’t associate the noise with such a beast of a bird. It’s an endangered species our remaining chickens will be pleased to know.

Collared Forrest Falcon full of chicken.

Worrying news. Pinto/Tripod (the dog that adopts us when it suit him) is AWOL. It’s been an officially worrying amount of time since we have seen him. Food on our balcony remains uneaten. No late night cacophony as he chases some beast up a tree. Our friend is missing. He is a remarkably hard arsed jungle dog and it would take a lot to bring him down so we have faith he is still around somewhere taking up a better offer. He is a tart for attention and food as known by everyone who has met him. This scruffy, stinky, battle hardened character is well loved and has an impressive international fan club. We await his return.

Our new president “AMLO” has certainly showed his intentions in his first month. It’s not going to be simple or painless to change the old ways. There have been highly disruptive propane shortages due to the government not allowing price increases. Hot showers are a rare thing these days in even in hotels. There is also a National fuel (petrol) shortage, which is grinding entire states to a halt. There is a previously accepted process where 48% of Mexico’s petrol is stolen and sold back to Pemex (the National petrol stations.) AMLO decided this was not going to continue so stopped the flow. Only official outlets are supplying fuel now. The Pemex stations that were forced to buy from the black market are shut off. In Michoacán there are over 90% of petrol stations without fuel today. Thankfully we have a small stash of propane and our local Pemex is buying legitimately so we are not as affected as most. Interesting times for Mexico. We just hope and pray that AMLO gets his way and doesn’t get stopped by less democratic means.

I have been banging on about our soon to be yoga deck now for months. As with any truly yogic project it’s on its way in it’s own time and space. Breathe and relax. Don’t stress. We found the necessary stuffs to keep the jungle out of our wood and make it the required colour. I have applied it to the main beams and will slowly work my way cutting to length, sanding and treating the 120 pieces of planking. We have the necessary tools and even the hardware. So no more excuses. My piles of wood look more like a deck every day. I’m hoping it’s own time and space converges with mine in the not too distant future. But no stress right? Just breathe in the varnish fumes.

We now have deep bassey playlists in our background thanks to our techno-handbag. Mixed in with our auto-generated lists of tunes appear short excerpts from Spanish language lessons. This is not a bad thing. Most recently we had Tom Waits followed by a 5 minute Spanish lesson followed by Rage Against the Machine then George Michael then 2 minutes of past tense grammar. These sneaky Trojan horses are helping my Spanish, which needs it.

We know a universal truth. Paying guests means much laundry and thankfully we have a heap of them. The girls in town are loving the business and we are becoming aficionados at recognizing a queen sheet from a matrimonial. Skills you never knew you needed. Good to have an income and make ends meet at the end of the month for a change. It’s our first season so we have a heap to learn but so far so good. Had really cool guests from all sorts of places near and far. Very nearly everyone gets what we are doing and 5 star loves us. Long may that continue. Validation always feels good and is motivating to make things even better in a positive way. Worth the challenge of the very few needy buggers and the endless loo buckets. Metaphorically and physically dealing with other people’s shit.

Pauly our Razor Polaris ATV is unwell. There has been dodgy sounds coming from the rear CV joint for a few days. This has distracted us from the clunky steering. We try and make a slow turn near our house and the steering goes completely. We are immensely grateful we were not traveling at any speed and our only problem is having to fix the thing where it stopped in the jungle. One of our fabulous mates is going to California to see his folks for Xmas and we ensure that there is a shiny new rack & pinion under his Mum’s tree to smuggle back to us post haste. Another mule is recruited from Canada to sneak us in a tiny little CV joint axle. We are resigned to be without our beloved and exceptionally useful ATV for a number of weeks. Django our trusted and much loved big blue van is employed. We thankfully just replaced her transmission and she is running well. Limonada the pick-up is still too thirsty and unreliable and we make plans to replace her. Life certainly slows down without Pauly.

We receive news about Pinto/Tripod. Despite being enormously well fed and medicated against fleas and ticks and in generally great shape our happy dog has been “rescued”. Some white woman “gringa” randomly decided to relocate Pinto the jungle hardened pack leader and find him a new less exciting suburban home. Bloody cheek! I‘m doing some research to see if I can trace this irritating self-righteous idiot and return Pinto to his exceptional jungle life. The search is on.

New Year Eve we deal with a significant influx and exit of guests and finally and gratefully we head out to meet friends at our favorite restaurant in town. The place is packed with familiar faces filled with excellent food. The Chamorro is a thing of beauty. Whenever my body needs energy or my heart needs to sing I have a 10 hour cooked Chamorro. The boys take a whole shank of pork and cook the life into it with oranges and herbs and just the right touch of care. Carlos is the chef here. I tend to avoid the young wannabes and head to the oldest slowest ladies to cook for me here. They are magicians. They really understand how to make the simple, the spectacular. Carlos is a young pretender with epic skills and all the love. He must have the best Grandma behind him somewhere. I love the Chamorros here. A large table of happy hungry heads share the last three with hot fresh tortillas and wash it down with complimentary truffle and mushroom soup left over from the posh menu. New year arrives in a blare of excellent noise from a DJ in a tree , highly dodgy pyrotechnics, tequila and many friends. Perfect.

It’s been another extraordinary year.

Jungle Journal

Onwards

November 28, 2018
by Beave

We dodged a significant bullet. Hurricane Willa moved North of us 50 Km as she hit shore. The jungle here cools the air slightly and creates a diversion for big storms, which saved us. We have the benefit of 36 hours of hard rain and being stuck on our land for day or two but that is the extent of our hardship. Those up North have not faired so well. Villages that have been there for centuries are no longer. Many small towns under water. Dozens dead. Thousands displaced with nothing but the wet clothes on their backs. There have been regular convoys of donated aid. The volunteers are doing traumatic work as best they can but return shocked and dejected by the scale of the crisis. It’s going to take a long time to restore even basic human needs up there. It’s humbling.

Our newest nearest neighbours are a young couple who have been employed to caretake the nearest ranch. She is 16 and has a 10 month old boy. They talk quickly and in country Spanish which I find very tough to comprehend. They are very keen to be hospitable and share what little they have. We & some of our friends have joined them for freshly made breakfast and Palomita (choco powder & milk straight from the cow with tequila frothed up and drunk warm). It is clear to us that visitors to our place love this experience so we are arranging to add it to the list of things to do. Make a few extra pesos for them which will be greatly appreciated.

We are not the last gasp residence out here. We are beaten by half a km by our friendly old hermit who lives in a ram shackled brick structure up in the hills with his cat. He and his brother share the building to sleep in and cook on open fires outside. They use the window as access as he lost the key to the door years ago. He walks into town everyday to give himself exercise so his smoking habit doesn’t kill him. His solitude makes encountering him a longer than expected issue as he finds it quite tough to stop talking. But he is the font of great knowledge as he sees things and knows things about the land here that no one else does. He can put his hands on 20 kg of limes at any time. He can find you a snake, an armadillo or a jaguar. On our last visit to his place he showed us a very good size snake skin curing in salt & sun to make himself a belt. He also knows where the water sources are. We are particularly interested in that. Our experience of 24V water pumps remains sketchy as we find the last one we installed buggered and had to build one from the bits of the busted three. Anyway gravity is a much more reliable thing so we employ our happy hermit and his visiting brother to run us about a kilometer of water pipe from the water source to the pools down to our land. We have on our shopping list a new 2500 liter tinaco which will be spring fed as back up to our current solar powered water well solution.

The pool, which has been a constant source of attention, gets a gift from our friends. They are currently without a pool but have brought with them from Canada a brightly coloured pool robot. Eric, as we call him, is made of day-glow plastic and looks like something from an early 80’s disco. His job is to run around the bottom of the pool like a mobile vacuum sucking up all the crap and goo and dust that it can find and ingesting it until we clean him out. This would usually require quite some faffing, some pumping and removing large amounts of water with the muck. We are somewhat attached to our new time saving day glow friend. He just gets on with it. Our lives are easier.

Miracle of miracles we have an egg. An egg from one of our chickens! I would love to wallow in the result of our perseverance and patience but I can’t. Our new neighbours, as young as they are, are old hands at raising chucks. They delivered three new chickens to our chicken nunnery last night to teach our remaining two what they are for! So the relatively useless Sister Bland and Sister Bricklebank are now joined by three big fat useful birds and we have an egg. Just the one but it’s a start.

There has been the issue of the new highway being build 200 yards from us hanging over our heads for some months. The construction crews are getting closer and the thought of losing so much jungle right in front of us is not a good thing to feel into. We see surveyors and forestry folk wandering around the hills and are waiting to see what happens next. Our contacts have suggested to us that there has been a slight change in the routing and there is a chance that we might be spared the worst of it. Just the thought of being beside major construction for up to a year takes the joy out of a peaceful jungle experience for sure. The thought of losing so much habitat for birds and beasts doesn’t bear thinking about. We are preparing for much guerrilla planting of fast growing bamboo to create a noise and sight barrier as soon as possible.

I talk to my brother who tells me the news we had been waiting for. My Dad has passed. His stroke in February took him from us and it has been a long tough eight months of hospital and care home visits for my Mum and brother. It’s expected but shocking non the less. I managed to see him the week before his stroke and again during my last visit for which I am ever grateful.

We visit the next town Lo De Marcos where we meet friends in the bar. News travels fast here and it becomes a spontaneous wake for my Dad. I travel home laid out in the bed of the pick up truck watching lightening between the clouds and stars and remembering my magnificent father.

It’s Dia de los Muertos in a few days and friends are creating a shrine for loved ones to be remembered. It’s a noble tradition to give one day a year to remember and honor loved ones who are no longer with us. Far from the spectacular scenes at the start of a certain 007 movie dia de los muertos is a time of reflection and a private family day. Graves are laden with flowers and families gather. If your ancestor was a musician music is played, if a dancer then there is much dancing, if a gambler then much is lost and won, if a drinker… you get the idea. For those of us wishing to participate without a graveside, alters are constructed with flowers and photographs, salt and earth and candles. There is a gathering in the town square and as children run around collecting sweets like Halloween I stand beside the picture of my Dad in the middle of the alter with a bottle of tequila and toast his life with everyone I meet. Friends and strangers. It’s a very cathartic experience.

It’s a strange thing that funerals in the UK are around two weeks or more after someone dies. In Mexico you are buried within 24 hours. It must be a whirlwind shock for the family to arrange everything and come to terms with the grief all at once. It’s a more drawn out process in UK with deaths having to be registered and formalities and booking churches and crematoriums weeks in advance. This does, however, allow us time to arrange caretakers for the land and arrangements for the properties we help manage and find flights.

It also allows us time to coordinate selling our beloved house in Darlington. It has been with me for 25 years and helped me raise two kids, a business and a sack full of much valued memories. I love that house but it’s time to let go again. Neither my son nor daughter wants to move back to Darlington and I have realised that I don’t either so it’s time. My kids’ inheritance is moving to Mexico and will soon be transformed into a yoga deck and many other sexy structures. It does mean flying to the UK for a week to say goodbye to my Dad and my house. A challenge.

It all starts rather well. Wales give us the great gift of beating Australia in the Rugby for the first time in 18 years the weekend before the funeral. Dad just loved his rugby and wherever we were in the world we spoke after every International. At full time, after a few brace of Guinness, my brother and I treat the pub to a loud rendition of Guide me O thou Great Redeemer (Cym Rhondda). Everyone gets an earful – Bread of Heaven at full volume. Lucky buggers.

The funeral in the idyllic rural village of Folkingham in Lincolnshire has been beautifully arranged and is very well attended. My brother and I stand next to the coffin and do a joint eulogy and say out load how we feel about the magnificent bugger . As emotional as it gets but we both got through it. There are Welsh hymns to get all the feels going including a more tuneful version of Cym Rhonnda . My son helps carry him, my daughter does a poignant reading and my niece sings an aria like an angel. Not a dry eye in the house. Just my brother and I rode with him to the crematorium. He tells me that he considers the wicker coffin looks more like a bread basket which lightens the mood. The girls have smuggled in a few cans of Guinness into the funeral car. We toast our Dad , Derek “Taff” Beaverstock. One last belt out of Cym Rhonnda sung by Welsh male voice choir and we are taken to the pub. Our journey is made all the more memorable by the appearance of the strongest and most spectacular rainbow spanning the Lincolnshire fields guiding our way. I appreciate all the support and love from everyone. I am left with the feeling that my Dad is far from gone but with me always.

We bid Lincolnshire and family farewell and travel to Darlington to meet a lovely chap who used to live in our house. He called us out of the blue and asked to meet up. He arrives in a tweed suit carrying photos and flowers. He has done very well for himself over the years but had humble beginnings in a couple of rented rooms in my house around the 1940s. We saw the place where they hid from the bombs during the war and the room where he was born and slept in a sock drawer as a baby. It was great to be so nostalgic with him sharing memories of the spaces we all shared at one point in our lives.

So onwards to our solicitor to sign it all away. Then back the house to donate the last of the furniture and tools (too big to fly with) to charity. Much lifting stuff into vans and saying farewell to empty rooms.

Our good Greek friend and super-chef opens his restaurant in Darlington to us to feed us magnificently and welcome friends who have helped us so much selling the house. A thank you and further wake awash with organic Greek red wine. Then to friends in Manchester via the apple store where our genius sees what Mexican humidity can do to technology. We reload on tech and good food and good company and fly home. Something of an emotional blur.

We return to find the highway chainsaw crews have already arrived and started taking down the 6m corridor of jungle where the road is going to be built. They have been working everyday we have been away and are now well advanced in their destruction. We look from every angle of the land and can’t see any change. This is a good thing. We have workers coming to us for water and to borrow tools. They tell us that although their vehicles are parked next to our gate they walk over 2km before they start work. It looks like the highway is 2000m away not 200m away. You can’t see it and there is a hill in between. This affects the value of our land (not that we are wanting to sell it) and our future plans significantly. It’s not for certain yet but this is potentially the best news we could get after a tough week.

The rains have stopped. We swim in the ocean and see whales passing by from the beach. We have good friends staying with us and we all have been invited to our first US Thanksgiving Dinner. The jungle is now considerably cooler and less humid even in the short time we have been away. The cash from the sale of the house is on it’s way to fund our next stage of creation. There is a lot to do.

It’s good to be home.

Jungle Journal

Spinning Plates

October 24, 2018
by Beave

Be careful what you ask for, right? We have been nagging on about the lack of water for months. We are now hunkered down after 30 hours of constant rain. The rivers are too strong to cross and a category 5 hurricane is heading our way tonight. We are stocked up and confident we can get through fairly unscathed but the poor buggers 50 miles North of us are set to get smashed. Huge seas swells and up to 18 inches of rain are forecast. Roads already closed due to landslides and there is a mass evacuation to higher land along the entire coast. Been up connecting generator to solar batteries and trenching water paths since first light. I’m soaked. We are not half as worried about our well levels today.

The Malecon in Puerto Vallarta *credit: Edgar Garnica*

Our fixation with getting lamb also has come to a head. Our butcher has promised us he now knows the difference between a goat and lamb and we order one. When we ask him about it the next week he tells us it has been delivered and is at his house. His kids are feeding it. Would we like to meet him? So that’s our meat eating choices becoming very real and in our consciousness. We decide that we cannot be too hypocritical and we will collect the meat the next day but decline the introduction. We are presented with our lamb skinned and whole. We agree how we require it butchering and take it all. The head is saved by me for a slow cooked treat at some point when I’m by myself. Jayne cannot face the face. Our freezer is now full.

My prison wine has had a lot of loving attention and sugar feeds. It’s time to decant it into glass and mature it to perfection. There is, however, a strange phenomena that we notice when it is in the bottle. Under the sunlight coming through the window the opaque amber liquor appears to be moving in patterns. A sort of shimmer and slight changes in colour. I examine closely and then chuck the lot very quickly into the jungle. It’s full of very tiny drunk worms. Wine fail. I am disappointed we lost all our banana stash. Jayne less so.

Our mate Pauly has arrived with us from Essex, UK for 9 weeks of helping us out. We take a “business trip” to Puerto Vallarta to collect him from the airport and indulge somewhat with what the big city has to tempt us. Recovery times are long and we arrive back to the jungle late. Our new 24V DC water pump he brought in his hand luggage from UK is installed immediately. His gifts of cheese, tea, marmite and whisky are quickly hidden away in the “precious things“ store. Pauly’s first night brings 4 inches of rain and a rather impressive lightening storm. He emerges from his new jungle cabin home shaken but not too phased. That is a good start.

He reminds us that he is about 300m from our treehouse. That is the furthest he has slept from another human being in his life.

Since we left for PV our man and his mates have taken machetes to the land and spent hours pulling roots. The place has been transformed. I can see the ground and jungle appears for the first time in weeks somewhat tamed. The water system repairs include a few broken lines and we get around to fixing them. While I am swinging a machete to make extra space for pipe I get a large painful strike to the ear. I consider that I have somehow lost control of the machete and hit myself. I then get another strike to my solar plexus and I rapidly work it out. I spot the nest. Hornets. Run. We leave the repairs for another day very rapidly.

I’m feeling slightly “other-worldly” as the day progresses. We go to town for a business meeting about some land for sale but I am just not able to make much sense of anything and am deposited in a restaurant beach bar to watch the surfers. The sea has taken on some extraordinary swells and the surfing at our beach is the best I’ve ever seen. The hornet venom adds some extra colour to proceedings. We watch as the beach is eaten away by the sea swell. The beach is only a few meters from the sea now and ends in a sharp drop down which a few large palapa shade structures are headed. We help save them and miss the main event. A freak wave has landed on the far table from us where Jayne is sitting. She is entirely soaked and covered in a thick layer of sand. Her amusement does not match my own. We leave for home as a tornado forms in the sea up the coast.

The disappearing beach is an annual event and is expected to return again within a few weeks. One of the benefits to the very high tides is that it is badly effecting a development that has been inflicted on our beach by less than scrupulous developers. Punta Paraiso was proposed some years ago as beachfront condo type apartments. The whole structure has been built far too close to the sea, which effectively steals land from the Mexican people and more disturbingly the turtles that have nested there for thousands of years. It is not supported in any way by the town and a strong campaign is underway alongside an active protest group to have it removed. Despite all the objections building continues and apartments are being sold off plan to unsuspecting Americans and Canadians. Karma may, however, be being played out as large sand deposits and waves have caused havoc already with the build (as well as Jayne.) The impending hurricane may just add to their worries too. We do hope so.

We are becoming a lot more productive. Wood has been ordered to construct our yoga platform in the trees. Not sure how we will get it all out there but will deal with that problem as is comes. We also acquired a load of pine wood and set about making a door for the Selva Vista apartment to replace the mosquito net and child gate that is there at the moment. What we end up with looks like a door from a pirate movie set and we are delighted. Just the right amount of nonsense. Fits perfectly. It’s good to get back into it again. Bit of creativity and the smell of wood being transformed.

Our truck is overheating, our razor exhaust has come adrift and our van’s transmission decides to stuff up as Jayne is on the highway going to collect her brother, his wife and her niece from the airport. Family day out required where we find someone to weld the exhaust and leave the van to get a new transmission. Living here has been described to me, by those who observe, as a constant process of spinning plates. There is always something that needs our attention. I’m not sure that it’s very different than most peoples existence juggling kids, work, habits, fun. We just have different plates to spin.

Our friend is having health issues and is in hospital getting rehydrated and contacts us to help her by letting her three dogs out. We are in the re-opened bar in Lo De Marcos and there is talk of baby turtles to be released on the beach at sunset. Jayne heads to see to dogs and agrees to meet us on the beach soon after. It turns out that it was a dog release day too. One of them decides to make a beak for it and vanishes. Jayne is distraught that her friend is in hospital now with a lost dog to add to her woes. The turtle release coincides with a spectacular sunset and a very stressed Jayne. The dog is eventually recovered, friend recovers and all is well again.

Juan Gabriel is a local horse. A fine good-looking sort that lives happily for most of the year outside near the local ranch. Unfortunately for him he has been recently deemed delicious by vampire bats and is covered in bites. Vets and local cures are deployed so the future is good but he is a sorry sight at the moment poor sod.

After a few days of overcast weather we awake to find we have no power. No sun means, of course, no solar power. We have become far too complacent with our fabulous system trusting it to power up in the dark. Not a good strategy. The generator is plugged in and saves the batteries. It’s been many days since we have seen the sun now and the humidity and rain have set in. Sun not expected to return for a while yet. Our clothes and our bodies are constantly damp or soaked. Hang anything up to dry and it gets wetter?? We make emergency runs to laundry just to get our stuff dry before it rots.

It’s a particularly wet day and so Jayne’s brother, Pauly and myself decide to lay 300m of Internet cable through thick jungle. As we know there is a perceived benefit to far too many to have constant Wi-Fi, Facebook and instagram available. Although our plan for jungle wide Internet does cater to those perceptions the biggest benefit to us is that we can talk directly to our solar system. Jayne is very excited by the prospect. It also allows the possibility of her Dad in Calgary, Canada to effectively monitor and manage our system remotely. Nerdy paradise. Another hornet encounter and a proper muddy soaking later the cable is laid. A day of fiddling and twiddling with modems and some trenching later and we have it. Our solar system talks to Jayne wherever she is and there is the facility (for those who need it) to attach a phone to their face at all times.

Our friends live in a rather amazing house on many floors overlooking Lo De Marcos from a hill. We are invited to Canadian Thanksgiving there. I didn’t know that was a thing . In advance of the party our man has been commissioned and has found some stunning Parota from which a table has been made and a bar constructed. Both bar and table are required on the very top floor of the house on top of the hill. We set off in the pickup truck which is massively overloaded with wood and men. It takes six of us to sweat and grunt and swear these enormous lumps of wood up all the stairs. My truck and my back will never be the same again. It was worth it. After a sand and varnish they look incredible. The party starts early afternoon for us with Mezcal and continues until late and we stay over. I somehow manage to survive my first Canadian Thanksgiving… but only just. I feel like I’ve been hit with a moose. Not a pretty sight.

We have had some aircrew friends and a pilot stay with us overnight. It reminded us that we need to be ready for guests at any time. Even off season rainy times. There is a flurry of sweaty & sweary cleaning and preparation not at all helped by my post thanksgiving moose hangover. We find that hornets love it around our cabañas and deal with a number of substantial hornet homes. One further discovery was that pillows just don’t survive the wet season here. They take on mold like nothing else even in these few short months of high humidity. Our “good value” pillows that were in protective plastic are covered in black mold and stink. I borrow some to get us away. Our next mission is to acquire good quality pillows and protect them with special covers and provide a delightful cloud like head space for our future guests. Our aircrew were sufficiently refreshed for it not to be an issue when the time came to collapse. They braved the jungle and the beasts well despite some clearly expressed anxiousness. Waking to find your window covered in black biting ants , however, may not have been the perfect start to the next day. At least they were on the outside.

Ants are everywhere just now. We have seen them take over entire areas in no time and then move on. Streams of them attack everything and anything in their path. Getting them in your shoes or sandals is not fun. We have seen large scorpions being carried off, hornets nests entirely overrun and even attempted to save a snake from them. The snake did not look well afterwards. They hurt when they bite.

Our bug of the month award goes to a very large black armored chap that gets to be the size of a small bird. They appear in the tree house attracted to the lights and fly very noisily around until they stupidly or clumsily collide with something. There is a “tock” noise as they impact the fridge or a wall and knock themselves out and land on the floor. I have to retrieve them and throw them outside before the cat chews on them. Not the most elegant of creatures. Dumb Bugs we call them.

Our perfect guests appeared on us with almost no notice at all. Our friend from Birding San Pancho delivers them to us. Thankfully our aircrew friends encouraged us to clean and prepare for them so we are a lot more ready than we were. The new group is a professor and four students from Mexico City. They are all entomologists! Unlike every other guest we have ever had they actually want to see bugs. Lots of them. They bring nets and screens and equipment and spend a couple of rapturous days in and around our place exalting all those things others revile. They leave very contented. That just might be a long term thing. Bring on the bug lovers.

So after a quick farewell surf Jayne’s brother and his family have returned to Vancouver. She misses them already. No more guests for a week or two. Pauly and I are still waiting for wood and a break in the weather to start the yoga platform. The hurricane is now just a few hours away and it’s still raining hard. We are attempting to stay dry and be ready for anything. Spinning plates.